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Automatically Create Thumbnails


This plugin for watchDirectory automates the creation of thumbnails. Input file formats supported include JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG, TIFF, PCX, TGA, WMF, EMF, PCD, and PSD. Output file format, the thumbnail, can be created as JPG, GIF or PNG.

Settings for this plugin

Where should thumbnails be placed
Enter the name of a directory to which you want to generate the thumbnails. You can use the button labeled "..." to browse for the directory. As the thumbnails will have the same name as the original pictures, you should not use the directory in which you place your original pictures.

Place them in sub-directories corresponding to the location of the original pictures
Assuming you use watchDirectory to monitor C:\NewPictures, including sub-directories, and configure this plugin to write thumbnails to C:\Thumbnails. Now you "upload" the picture holiday.jpg to C:\NewPictures\MySummerholiday.

If you have checked this option, the thumbnail will be created as C:\Thumbnails\MySummerholiday\holiday.jpg.
If you did not check this option, the thumbnail will be created as C:\Thumbnails\holiday.jpg.
These sub-directories will be created automatically.

Automatically Rotate the thumbnails (based on the Orientation tag)
More expensive cameras write Orientation information to the header of JPG files. This plugin can use that information to rotate your picture accordingly.
Note that some camera manufacturers also add this Orientation information, but always indicate there is no need to rotate. You may need to experiment a bit.

Always rotate the thumbnails (if no Orientation tag is present)
If your camera does not support the Orientation tag, you can set a fixed rotation angle with this option. Set "degrees" to 270 if you want to rotate 90 degrees counter clockwise.
If you also have "Automatically rotate based on the Orientation tag" selected, the picture will not rotate twice. This option will only affect pictures without orientation tags.
If you did not select "Automatically rotate based on the Orientation tag", the thumbnail will always rotate (even if an Orientation tag is present).

Automatically resize the thumbnail
This changes the width and height of the thumbnail to a percentage of the original width and height.

Automatically resize the thumbnail to fit this Bounding Box
This changes the width and height of the thumbnail so it will fit the dimensions you set. Resizing occurs after rotation.
This setting is useful if you want these thumbnails to look nice inside HTML tables, as can be created by the Automatically Create HTML plugin.
TIP: If you only want to "fix" one of the dimensions, you can set the other dimension to a large value. For example, if you want your thumbnails to have a width of 60 pixels and don't care about the height, just set the height to 1000.

Reduce the quality of thumbnails
Drag the slider to adjust the quality of the resulting thumbnail. A setting of 50% is a good tradeoff between size and quality.
Only supported for JPG output

CPU Usage
Drag the slider to control the CPU usage while creating thumbnails. If you drag the slider all the way to the right, the thumbnails are created fastest, but this will prevent you from doing anything else on the computer.

Watermark
Enter the text you want written on the thumbnail. This text is written after the thumbnail has been rotated.

Thumbnail Prefix
Enter a prefix you want added to the name of generated thumbnails, for example "thumb".

Thumbnail Suffix
Enter a suffix you want added to the name of generated thumbnails, for example "thumb".

Output Format
Select the thumbnail format. Either JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF or Original. "Original" will use the same format as the original picture or JPG if not possible.

Now press next to Configure the Directory to MonitorNext