Thumbnail Generator - An easy way to process thumbnails from a large amount of images

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Introduction

I have always had problems generating thumbnails from a large amount of images quickly and easily. Also standard graphic programs couldn't meet my needs - or it simply took too much time handling image after image.

Benefits

This Thumbnail Generator is qualified for generating thumbnails of images you are publishing on the Internet. Pre-generated thumbnails save you processor utilization and disk space (if you're generating thumbnails on the fly) - or user's time and money.

But also converting a large amount of images from one file format to another can be handled easily.

This project might also be an interesting starting point for Win Form rookies. Learn how forms, simple internationalization support and XML are working together! Just download the project source code, all source files are commented.

Supports

Image support

• Different file formats (BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF) - for both: source images and target thumbnails
• Self specified thumbnail image extensions
• Preview of source images and output thumbnails (including information on width, height, ratio)
• Fixed width, height as well as maintaining aspect ratio
• Bilinear re-sampling

Generating a ListBox item:

/* Retrieve image to get it's infos */
Image LbxSourceImage = Image.FromFile(filesFromDialog[i]);
imgList.Images.Add(LbxSourceImage);


/* Calculate image ratio */
float Ratio=((float)LbxSourceImage.Width)/((float)LbxSourceImage.Height); 

/* Generates Listboxitem */
ImageListBoxItem lbxItem = new ImageListBoxItem(
    filesFromDialog[i].ToString()+                /* Filename */
    "\r\n"+txtWidth+LbxSourceImage.Width.ToString()+    /* Width    */
    ", "+txtHeight+LbxSourceImage.Height.ToString()+    /* Height   */
    ", "+txtRatio+Ratio.ToString(),i);            /* Ratio    */

lbxSource.Items.Add(lbxItem);

Multilingual support

Also full multilingual support for English and German language is provided. (Feel free to contribute other translations ;) )

Internationalization is managed via XML. All GUI texts are read on startup, from the application configuration file (of course the language can also be changed during a session). The project includes a collection of useful methods for processing XML documents. You can easily use them for your own applications.

The configuration file looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?>
<!DOCTYPE Application SYSTEM "Config.dtd">
<Application>
  <Information>
    <Name>Thumbnail Generator</Name>
    <Version>0.8</Version>
  </Information>
  <StdLanguage Type="en"/>
  <Language Type="en">
    <Text GUIRelation="btnGenerateThumb">Generate Thumbnails -->

Within the application the language information is fetched via XPath. Sample calls:

XPathDocument XPathDoc = new XPathDocument(configFileName);
XPathNavigator nav     = XPathDoc.CreateNavigator();

gbxSource.Text = XmlManager.GetValueFromXPath(nav, 
          "/Application/Language[@Type='"+
          CurrentLang+"']/Text[@GUIRelation='gbxSource']");
gbxTarget.Text = XmlManager.GetValueFromXPath(nav, 
          "/Application/Language[@Type='"+
          CurrentLang+"']/Text[@GUIRelation='gbxTarget']");

History

• 09. March 2003: Initial release. See section "Supports"

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