Optimum picture sizes for News Pro Theme

[HTH]

Hello,

I searched but couldn't find the answer on this one. On the News Pro theme, the featured image box is wider but not as tall (height) as the actual blog post image. When I set the layout to be content left / side bar right, the blog post image will appear taller but not as wide. I've noticed cropping occurring on the featured image, and it is slightly problematic because the watermark on some images is hanging halfway off the image. I have 9 category pages on my website, 7 of them are uniform, 1 is pull page width, and one of them has a secondary sidebar left, content center, primary sidebar right.

Is there an optimum image size that can be created to fit for both featured image and the blog posts? I don't want the water mark to hang off the page and I don't want the image to get squeezed or get stretched to some ratio that looks ugly.

Also, I would like to offer banner advertisements on the website but I'm not sure what the maximum image width can be for the blog post itself - or what size they can create which (say, 2100px by 900 px) which will then scale to 700px by 300px and look good on the blog post. I would just inlay the advert as a picture inside the post but again, I'm clueless when it comes to the size in terms of width.

Any help would be most appreciated!

[Tom]

Hey,

May be I need more coffee, but your post raises more questions than I have answers 🙂

"featured image box" - How do you define this? Do you mean the tabbed section in "Home Top" on the front page?

"actual blog post image" - How do you define this? By default, News Pro does not display the featured image in posts.

"banner advertisements on the website" - "inlay the advert as a picture inside the post" - Where do you wish to place these?
What method or plugin are you using to place the banner ads?

A link to your live site would probably help explain a lot.

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[HTH]

Hello Tom,

I apologize for the confusion. The site isn't live yet. I can't exactly include screenshots here but I'll try to explain further.

What I consider "featured image" is the picture box at the top of the home page on New Pro, and yes - it has tabs. If my measurements are correct, using the screenshot function from my Macbook, it looks to be about 740 pixels wide and about 400 pixels high. You can see this at the demo: http://my.studiopress.com/themes/news/#demo-full - the "featured image" is the woman standing with her back to the camera getting photographed. The headline reads "Stars Hit the Red Carpet." If you click the image you enter into what I consider the actual "blog post image" which is again similar layout to my site - content left, sidebar right. But notice the image size has changed. It's not cropped anymore.

This image does not have a watermark on it like some of mine do. So when I put a water marked image that is of equal proportions to this and it appears on the featured image box on the home page under it's particular category, the watermark is cropped as well. So if I create images to fit the featured image box on the front page, they will be wider and less tall than if they were in the blogpost - where the image appears to be taller but less wide. Even if I stop using the watermark, what if I add a picture and I want the framing to be correct - from blog post image to featured image it is not resizing anything - it is cropping.

At this point, don't even get me started on the other smaller images like 348 wide by however tall they are. This image is on the right side of the demo called "Touring Group Tears Down The House."

So it seems to me there are 2 or perhaps 3 different sizes to deal with - If my math is correct, resizing and cropping to make them all good looking without anything hanging off the page or being squeezed is not possible. I'm not a picture expert either but I could tell photoshop to resize to X by X pixels and live with it. Or learn how to crop better using photoshop to get the sizes I need to work for this theme.

As for the advertising banners et al. - once I figure out the maximum width I will just use the media button to post them like pictures and link the url to the site involved.

Basically, I can't figure out what picture size I need to use to get around this debacle. If the picture has a watermark and it is showing up on the front page, the watermark is cropped slightly because of the featured image size.

[Tom]

I can’t figure out what picture size I need to use to get around this debacle

tl;dr - Choose one.

The theme is designed for featured images at 740x400px: this is the size that the theme displays on the front page in Home Top using the Featured Image as specified in each post. The demo images inserted into posts start full size at 900x600 and so must be cropped to present as featured images at 740x400. The images you insert into a post may be any size. If you made all of your images full-size at 740x400px you could simply specify these as featured images and also choose them for post/page insertion, selecting "Full Size", which would be selectable as "Full Size - 740 x 400"**. There are no style changes required, the theme works as designed and you don't have featured images with cropped content/watermarks.

If you choose a different size for use as a featured image you will have to re-style/re-design the home-top area used with Genesis Featured Tabs, changing the home-top image size in functions.php and regenerating thumbnails.

Alternatively, you could use another, larger, image size for insertion into posts/pages, just make sure that your watermark fits inside 740x400 when cropped so that it appears properly as a featured image in Home Top.

**If you want to be able to choose one of the themes 'Home Top', 'Home Middle' or 'Home Bottom' image sizes using the "Add Media" button, add this code to your functions.php:

add_filter( 'image_size_names_choose', 'custom_image_sizes_choose' );
function custom_image_sizes_choose( $sizes ) {
    $custom_sizes = array(
        'home-bottom' => 'Home Bottom',
        'home-middle' => 'Home Middle',
        'home-top' 	  => 'Home Top'
    );
    return array_merge( $sizes, $custom_sizes );
}

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[HTH]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the info, much appreciated. I'll give it a go and see what happens.....will pop back here if results are good/bad for feedback.

[Author]

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