Photoshop or Coppermine editor?

[Gypsy Row]

I am so new to coppermine, only exposure one of my favorite sites uses it, but I'm working on a new website for my son's National Guard unit who are deploying to Iraq in November. I have a friend who is helping me with a php site and we're planning on using coppermine for our photo gallery. So I have a CD here full of training photo's, I would like to reduce size, crop out wasteful backgrounds and such, normally I'd fire up photoshop and go to town. But in doing some searches here in the forums, I see where coppermine has a photo editor.

Is there any advantage to using one over the other? I am also torn between letting users upload their own pictures but I've become spoiled on optimzing pictures period... in file size, in the cropping that lets you have more of your subject instead of wasting valuable file size on something like a square inch or more of extra, non-essential background, of sky, etc., and many of the users will not understand about dpi issues and will most likely do nothing but take the pictures straight from their digital to the upload. And I don't want an instant resize option, as that simply reduces the pic, while I want to optimize what's IN the picture on a resize, first and foremost.

So, can I do the same in the photo editor in coppermine, or is it pretty much the same, if I edit in photoshop before uploading? How does the coppermine gallery deal with different picture sizes?  While I'd like all pictures to be similiar, an auto-size option isn't always very kind to picture quality.

So, experienced users...would love your thoughts before I go resizing 100 pictures in photoshop...  :-) Muchas gracias for any tips!

[Joachim Müller]

it's always way better to crop and resize your pics on the client (before upload), the coppermine pic editor is only a lame crutch compared to the powers of a desktop app like photoshop. Resize/crop/manipulate your full size pics on your client, then ftp-upload them to your webserver (into your_coppermine_folder/albums/any_subfolder_you_like_to_create) and use coppermine's feature to build the thumbnail and intermediate pics for you. Coppermine is best when used for it's original purpose: it will create the navigation around your actual content (your pics) without having you to fiddle with html code every time you add a pic, and it will make the pics look the same size for users browsing, making them fit onto the screen (basically just fixing the disadvantages you have when displaying pics on the web by keeping large pic dimensions from breaking your site's layout).
The question if you're going to allow user interaction on the page (i.e. allowing users to upload pics, rate or comment them) is up to you - you have to keep in mind that it requires some moderation effort if you allow them to do so, but it mightl raise the interest people take in your page if they're allowed to interact. You can savely start your coppermine gallery without user interaction and raise the different levels of interaction when your page has been launched by toggling the upload/rate/comment features for everyone or only for particular groups of users.

Hope that helps.

Joachim

[Tarique Sani]

Photoshop (or your fav desktop Image Editing App)- anytime

[Gypsy Row]

Thanks to both of you for the comments. I might let our soldiers in Iraq be the only ones who can upload, but I'm guessing it will be quicker for them to email them to me, then they can get on to emailing friends and family.

One more question please, as I'm cropping, does coppermine handle the size of each picture differently, like do I set parameters and then every pic is that size, or if I have some smaller and some larger, will it adjust? Thanks.

[Joachim Müller]

there are various config options, but basically you set max dimensions for thumbnails and intermediate sized pics. Take a look at the config section in the documentation - should give you an idea: http://coppermine.sourceforge.net/manual.php#config_picture_thumbnail
Why don't you just give it a try and see for yourself - coppermine is easily set up - play with it and the setup options it has; this is the best way to understand how it works.

Joachim