Does anyone know of any good thumbnail making software?

[Corey]

Looking for software if anyone can help. I've tried them all and I can't find a tool which works properly. I need to be able to feed it a folder of images (must auto-recurse sub-directories) to be turned into contact sheets (pages of thumbs). I need it to be able to "don't stretch small images to fit" with the large ones since I have lots of really small images such as bullets as well as large images such as templates. And finally I need it to be able to insert the filenames as captions, margins/spacing, and have some sort of output file function... If I can find that I'm set...

Oh yeah and it can't freeze when you feed it 25,000 images at a time... Help??? Please???

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[Lorne]

Re: Does anyone know of any good thumbnail making software?

Have you tried these:

Batch It! Ultra
Thumbnail Refinery

Also, I think the Gimp is able to do batch processing. If not, you could certainly use its CLI interface to automate the task using AutoPlay.

[TJ_Tigger]

Re: Does anyone know of any good thumbnail making software?

I have been using CompuPic Pro for years. It does a great job of converting photos in a variety of ways. Look at the Pro version since it has the ABC (Advanced Batch Converter) and Picture index. You can enter overlay text and there are macros for using folder and file names in such instances when using ABC, but you might just be looking for the Picture index, where you cannot automatically add text overlays. Take a look, they have a full functioning demo (I think it was years ago when I first tried it). I take a lot of digital pictures and this works best for me to manage my images.

If you have questions about it let me.

[Corey]

Re: Does anyone know of any good thumbnail making software?

Yeah I tried advanced batch converter, I can't remember why it didn't work, I think it didn't have a "don't stretch small images to fit" feature. No biggie, we decided to go another way with this but thanks hugely for the link Tigg...

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[TJ_Tigger]

Re: Does anyone know of any good thumbnail making software?

I don't think it stretched small images to fill the thumbnail. I could be wrong though. Attached are some screenshots of the tool.

26619-corey.zip

[Corey]

Re: Does anyone know of any good thumbnail making software?

No but it also kept the thumbnail size. That's no good for tiny images. A contact builder should be "smart" and put small images say 12 X 12 to the page instead of the set 5 X 6 template or whatever. It treats large images just like small ones. For a collection of 25,000 images one would be looking at 850 pages even if most of those images were only 5 X 5 pixels... An 850 page pdf would get used by end users about as much as one of those singing fish plaques...

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[TJ_Tigger]

Re: Does anyone know of any good thumbnail making software?

It is not "Smart" but you can adjust how many you want on a page yourself. I like this format because you can adjust it to your liking. Oh well, I tried. Let me know what you find that you like.

Tigg

[Corey]

Re: Does anyone know of any good thumbnail making software?

I nkow but what if your folder contains some really small images as well as some really large images? As for the finding, I tried out abour 25 programs yesterday but I can't find a single contact sheet builder which is smart enough to reduce column size for small images and increase it for large ones.

I did find one that had a maxsize% and minsize% which looked really promising but then it was unable to recurse sub-directories!!! Honestly I'd have to say I doubt one exists at this point, sigh, if you'll excuse me I've got about 30 different trial version thumbnailer proggys to go uninstall...

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[JimS]

Re: Does anyone know of any good thumbnail making software?

I like ThumbsPlus from Cerious Software
http://www.cerious.com

[Corey]

Re: Does anyone know of any good thumbnail making software?

Yeah we tried that one too, same thing... Would be great if your images are all similar size or shape but if your images range from 800 X 2 to 5 X 5 it does the same thing as the others...

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[yosik]

Re: Does anyone know of any good thumbnail making software?

Corey,
What about irfanview? besides beeing free (before last version). It does batch conversion, contact sheets, thumbnail creation etc...
Yossi

[Corey]

Re: Does anyone know of any good thumbnail making software?

Irfanview is my fave of all, I use it as my default image viewer but in a cruel twist of fate it doesn't recurse subdirectories... Nonetheless it is superb software.

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[yosik]

Re: Does anyone know of any good thumbnail making software?

Corey,
Have you checked out CompuPic Pro from Photodex?
Looks like it could answer your needs. Multiple directories browser and batch function is included.
Yossi

[Corey]

Re: Does anyone know of any good thumbnail making software?

Thanks Yossi, I'll have a look...

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[TJ_Tigger]

Re: Does anyone know of any good thumbnail making software?

That is my favorite. But I don't think it has the 'smart' functions that Corey is looking for. You can build contact sheets but not in a dynamic way. He wants to be able to take a lot of different sized images and build thumbs without stretching them into the same sized thumbnail. I think what Corey is looking for is a nonconformist thumbnail maker. Something with conditional statements. If the image is smaller then Y x Z then make the thumbnail this size. Otherwise make it this size.

Things it will do:
- multiple subfolders. Albeit not automatically but you can select multiple folders for it to work on.
- build contact sheets. Yes, it even has a great batch program.
- Insert file names as captions. With the contact sheet builder it will add the file name under the pic, and with the batch converter I think you can add the file name as a text overlay. They have some nice macros.

The problem is the "do not stretch small images". With the batch converter you could have it only resize if an image is larger than Y x Z. This way it would only create the thumbnail for your larger images and not the small buttons. I usually us the Batch converter to convert images for posting to the web and not for making thumbs.

They have a great webpage generator as well. This might be another option Corey if you wanted an online catalog of your files. This is customizeable like the contact sheet creator. If you understand their coding, you can even create your own 'stylesheet' for creating a web page.