stephenbaugh

Many WordPress themes, are heavily dependant on “feature images” to use as thumbnails to make them look good. This is great except it adds a lot of extra work setting up these thumb references, but equally if you are in a hurry and forget you add the thumb then the look of the theme breaks.
So here is Tui’s Find Thumb plugin. It is very easy to use. It’s purpose is to replace the Image function currently used in your theme with one that is lot more clever. With these new functions available you can do everything from a randomly select an image, or return a URL or IMG tag source specifically for that post.
The post option works through this logic until it gets a result
<ol>
<li>Returns an IMG tag based on the thumbnail set in the post meta data (through special post fields) </li>
<li>The first image in the post</li>
<li>A randomly chosen image from a directory (in your base images directory) with the same name as the posts first category slug.</li>
<li>A randomly chosen image from your base images directory</li>
</ol>
<h3>Functions available</h3>
There are 5 funtions that can be accessed through this plugin.
1. tui_findRandomBackgroundSTYLE()
<pre><code>Returns a random image URL from the background images folder if one exists else the base image folder.
</code></pre>
2, tui_findRandomThumbURL()
<pre><code>Returns a random image URL from base image folder
</code></pre>
3. tui_findRandomThumbIMG(“Height”,”Width”,”Class”,”Title”,”Alt”)
<pre><code>Returns a random image IMG Tage from base image folder
</code></pre>
4. tui_findPostThumbURL(“thepostID”)
<pre><code>Returns a URL, having searched based on the postID
</code></pre>
5. tui_findPostThumbIMG(“thepostID”,”Height”,”Width”,”Class”,”Title”,”Alt”)
<pre><code>Returns an IMG tag, containing the URL, height, width, alt, title and class, having searched based on the postID<h3>Support</h3>
</code></pre>
Support can be found on plugin homepage: http://www.stephenbaugh.com/blog/wordpress-plugins/find-thumb/
You can also view project here: http://code.google.com/p/tui-find-thumb/
<ul>
<li>
Additional documentation: http://code.google.com/p/tui-find-thumb/w/list
</li>
<li>
Issues & requests: http://code.google.com/p/tui-find-thumb/issues/list
</li>
<li>
Development version: http://code.google.com/p/tui-find-thumb/source/
</li>
<li>
Change logs: http://code.google.com/p/tui-find-thumb/wiki/Changelogs
</li>
</ul>

Tui’s Find Thumb

This plugin has been written to provide various ways to return an image thumb either as a URL or IMG tag. There are four functions.

Pär Thernström

MarsApril

** This plugin will no longer be updated. **
This plugin does three things:
<ol>
<li>It creates rewrite rules that let you create nice urls for your images, 
like “http://example.com/image/55/DSC_0001.jpg” instead of “http://example.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/DSC_0001.jpg””</li>
<li>It let’s you resize and crop images. And you can add unsharp filter to them too.</li>
<li>It adds a function, simple_thumbs_img() and with this function you can create ready-to-go IMG-tags 
that outputs the correct width and height, even if you choose to resize or crop your image.</li>
</ol>
<h4>Rewrite Rules/Nice Image URLs example</h4>
Instead of this URL: 
http://example.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/DSC_0001.jpg
Your image can have this URL, where 55 is the Attachment ID: 
http://example.com/image/55/DSC_0001.jpg
Shorter and sweeter. 
But there’s more! You can also send in some arguments:
Resize the image to be 150px in width: 
 http://example.com/image/55:w150/DSC_0001.jpg
Resize the image to be 150px in width, and give it another name (you can name the image to whatever you want) 
http://example.com/image/55:w150/my-cool-image.jpg
Resize the image to 150px in height: 
http://example.com/image/55:h150/DSC_0001.jpg
Resize the image to stay within 150px in height and width: 
http://example.com/image/55:w150:h150/DSC_0001.jpg
Crop the image to exactly 150px in width and height: 
http://example.com/image/55:w150:h150/DSC_0001.jpg
Make a small thumb, and also add an unsharp filter: 
http://example.com/image/55:w175:h75:c1:u1/DSC_0001.jpg
Make a small thumb, and also add an unsharp filter, and output as png: 
http://example.com/image/55:w175:h75:c1:u1:fp/DSC_0001.jpg
Same as above, but with pipe as the delimeter (you can choose between ,._- and |): 
http://example.com/image/55|w175|h75|c1|u1|fp/DSC_0001.jpg
Please note that all the resize stuff where made without adding any querystring to the URL. 
This is good for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) reasones, but also for caching reasons. 
Google Page Speed will for example give you a higher score because of this! 🙂
All generated images will be cached, so only the first call to each URL restults in an actual resize of the image. 
Images are also sent with far future expires headers, so if a user returns to your page all images should load blazingly fast.
<h4>simple_thumbs_img(): The Magic Function</h4>
simple_thumbs_img() generates IMG tags for you, with the correct width & height attributes set, even after resize.
With no width and height values set, the page may be redrawn several times, resulting in a very “jumpy” page. 
Using Simple Thumb to create your image tag will solve this problem.
Lack of width and height atributes in img-tags can also lead to 
errors when JavaScript ondomready calculations are made while images are still loading, since 
it can’t determine the size of the image.
<pre><code> <?php

 // get img tag with nice url for image with id 55, with the correct width and height attributes set.
 // do whatever you wan't with it
 $img_src = simple_thumbs_img("id=55&tag=1");

 // print img tag with nice url for image with id 55, with the correct width and height attributes set.
 echo simple_thumbs_img("id=55&tag=1");

 // print img tag with nice url for image with id 55, and resize it to be a thumb that has the max size 75x75,
 // with the correct width and height attributes set.
 echo simple_thumbs_img("id=55&tag=1&w=75&h=75");

 // print img tag with nice url for image with id 55, and crop it to be a thumb that has the excact size 75x75,
 //with the correct width and height attributes set, and add an alt text
 echo simple_thumbs_img("id=55&tag=1&w=75&h=75&m=c&alt=My alternative text");

 ?>
</code></pre>
<h4>Resize modes</h4>
Control the way the thumbs are created by adding parameter “m”, as in “mode”. 
To learn how they work just experiment a bit.
<ul>
<li>within = mw</li>
<li>crop = mc</li>
<li>portrait = mp</li>
<li>landscape = ml</li>
<li>auto = ma</li>
</ul>
<h4>Filters</h4>
<ul>
<li>unsharp mask – good for making small thumbnails appear to have more detail. Once you’ve gone unsharp, you don’t want to go back! 🙂 
u0 for note, u3 for sharpest</li>
</ul>
<h4>Donation and more plugins</h4>
<ul>
<li>If you like this plugin don’t forget to <a href="http://example.com/sida/donate/" rel="nofollow ugc">donate to support further development</a>.</li>
<li>More <a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/profile/eskapism" rel="ugc">WordPress CMS plugins</a> by the same author.</li>
</ul>

Simple Thumbs

Create image thumbs from WP attachments, w/ option to crop & fit to wanted size & create IMG-tags w/ correct width & height attributes.

Tui’s Find Thumb vs Simple Thumbs