Graphic Fit

This may or may not have been answered before, but a quick search of this came up empty.

 

Is there a setting to do a "Fit to Longest Edge" for a variable uploaded graphic?

 

I have a project where I have almost no control over the uploaded graphics being used but I have set sized boxes that need to be proportionally filled. I gave the customer the options that FusionPro does ("Original size", "Best Fit", "Fit to Shortest Edge" and "Unproportional Force-fit"). They responsed that they wanted a "Fit to Longest Edge" and just crop the extra. The boxes are all wider than they are tall so the "Best Fit" and the "Fit to Shortest Edge" options are both coming out the same size. Original size and Unproportional Force-fit are both out of the question since the boxes are at times different dimensions for the same graphic.

 

What am I able to use for this option to "Fit to Longest Edge"?

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I'm not sure what exactly you're trying to accomplish. A screen shot might be worth a thousand words.

 

I can tell you that in FusionPro, by definition, "Best Fit" means exactly the same thing as "Fit to Longest Edge" (of the frame) so I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make. Also, there's nothing to crop (clip) with "Best Fit," because the graphic is sized to fit inside the frame (again, by definition). If you're using "Fit to Shortest Edge," then you can, of course, choose whether to crop (clip) off the extra part of the graphic that doesn't fit (along the "longest" edge of the frame).

 

Keep in mind that, in all of what I'm writing here, the "edge" in question is the edge of the graphic frame itself, not the edge of whatever variable image is being placed into it. The composition engine doesn't do any fundamentally different handling of images based on their aspect ratio ("landscape" vs. "portrait"). If you need to make that distinction in your job, please see this thread, specifically the example attached to this post.

If this project is for a Marcom Store product, you can use a setting on the field where they upload their images. In the template setup, under "Form Display", click on the graphic icon at the left of your graphic field designation and the "Configure Image Field" options window comes up. Change "Image Cropper upload?" to yes. With this set to yes, the person uploading the graphic will get a preview window with their image and a scaleable box which is the proportions of your graphic frame. The user can enlarge or reduce the box proportionately but can't change the orientation. Basically you let the user crop their image to fit the space.

Unfortunately we do not use the Marcom Store product so that option is not available to us. Here is a jpg attachment explaining what I want.

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Ok, I see.

 

"fit to shortest edge" is refering to the shortest edge on the image not the frame. A portrait oriented image should fill your sample box then. However the landscape image that is to short won't.

 

Looks like you may have to just center the image and hope for the best, or align it appropriately to work with the other page elements. Not a good solution either way.

 

I'm not a java guru but maybe there is something in java that can convert images.

Unfortunately what I thought the "Fit to Shortest Edge" meant was fit to the shortest edge of the graphic box in FusionPro not the shortest edge of the uploaded image being displayed. As you can see in the new attachment (a portrait oriented image) that is what is happening.

 

Again, what I need is a fit to "Longest Edge" of either the image itself or the FusionPro graphic box.

 

Maybe I should make that an upgrade request for a future version?

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Unfortunately what I thought the "Fit to Shortest Edge" meant was fit to the shortest edge of the graphic box in FusionPro not the shortest edge of the uploaded image being displayed. As you can see in the new attachment (a portrait oriented image) that is what is happening.

 

Again, what I need is a fit to "Longest Edge" of either the image itself or the FusionPro graphic box.

 

Maybe I should make that an upgrade request for a future version?

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Thanks David, I see what the issue is now. I have entered an enhancement request for this functionality. Please refer to case FP-11303. We are looking at other ways of enhancing FusionPro's graphic handling abilities as well.

I can tell you that in FusionPro, by definition, "Best Fit" means exactly the same thing as "Fit to Longest Edge" (of the frame)

Sorry, I have to correct myself here. The difference is that "Best Fit" will scale to either the horizontal or vertical size ("edge") of the graphic frame as appropriate to make it fit, whereas "Fit to Shortest Edge" will always scale to, well, the shortest edge, i.e. the smaller dimension (width vs. height) of the frame. In the case where the general aspect ratio (landscape vs. portrait) of the frame and the image are the same, then both "Best Fit" and "Fit to Shortest Edge" will give the same results. David's request is for a different behavior, as shown in his first excellent attachment. Anyway, I hope this helps to clear things up, and I apologize for my contribution to any confusion.

"fit to shortest edge" is refering to the shortest edge on the image not the frame.

Again, just to clarify, it is actually referring to the shortest edge (dimension) of the frame, not of the graphic being placed into it.

Looks like you may have to just center the image and hope for the best, or align it appropriately to work with the other page elements. Not a good solution either way.

 

I'm not a java guru but maybe there is something in java that can convert images.

I don't know about java, but the sample I linked to earlier uses JavaScript logic to measure the dimensions of a graphic and handle landscape and portrait images differently. I would think that could be a great starting point for a solution. For instance, you could use the same basic logic from the rules in that sample, but reverse them to put landscape graphics in portrait frames, and vice-versa, so that "Best Fit" would scale the graphic to the "edge" you want. You could then add some "blank" (filled with white if your job allows) frames at a higher layer to do the cropping.

Hello David,

 

We do have an enhancement we are tracking which I believe might be exactly what you are looking for. We are calling it "Proportional Fill" and it will be a new option for Graphic scaling in variable graphic frames.

 

Proportional Fill works almost identically to the InDesign feature "Fill Frame Proportionally" in that a graphic will be proportionally scaled to the SMALLEST size that completely FILLS a frame - regardless of the proportions of the frame or the graphic. We will also look to honor horizontal/vertical alignment of the graphic in the frame as well as clip on/off.

 

I've included a simple mock-up to demonstrate proportional fill (clip is off in all these).

 

http://forums.printable.com/picture.php?albumid=3&pictureid=21

 

Please let us know if this meets your needs. We are tracking this as case FP-11191 and it is currently in consideration for the very next release of FusionPro - version 6.2.

As long as you can still set the anchor points for those frames as well then yes this is exactly what I am looking for.

 

Also, is there something being looked at in the future that will allow those graphic frame anchor points to be a variable selection as well. Somehow being able to program the frame contents to be bottom-left, top-right, center-center, center-left, etc. to allow the programmer/end-user to select where and how they want the picture to fall within that graphic?

 

Thanks

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The alignment settings (vertical/horizontal) will be honored for graphic frames when Proportional Fill is used.

 

As for dynamically setting the alignment (if I understand your correctly), this can be done today in OnRecordStart (a FusionPro 6.0 feature). Something like this:

 

gFrame = FindGraphicFrame("MyFrameName1");

gFrame.horizontalAlignment = "center";
gFrame.verticalAlignment = "bottom";

 

The values set here can of course be driven by the data if you want to collect that from the user.

 

Is this what you are looking for?

Mark,

 

Our client is really bugging us about this feature. Do you know if this is indeed being implimented in the 6.2 release of FusionPro, and if so when is that scheduled roll-out being slated for?

D,

 

Is this something that Photoshop could accommodate in Automated/Batch processing till FP meets that need of yours?

 

If you had "two" different boxes that were different dimensions for the same photo, you could apply two different actions to the original photo to accommodate your graphic frame sizes in FusionPro.

 

So I'm thinking that if you got in let's say, 40 images from the client. You could put those images in one folder, apply two different automated task to those photos and have them labeled accordingly.

 

Just trying to see if that would be a band-aid for now?

 

Good luck

OK 2010 and I have version 6.1P1m which is the latest version. Is this proportional fit still in the works?

Proportional fill is exactly what I need.

 

I've just downloaded and installed v6.2P1a, but it doesn't seem to be there?

 

Has this feature been included in this version?

 

Peter

The new release of FusionPro 7.0 includes a "Proportional Fill" feature for variable graphics.

Thanks for the reply Dan.

 

I recently spoke to a Printable employee (didn't get his name) on your stand at IPEX about this picture fit problem and he told me there was a new version coming out. He then raised concerns about whether the new version would work properly with EFI's Digital StoreFront (which is in our configuration). I immediately went over to EFI's stand and spoke to David Minnick, who is a Product Manager for Web2Print. He was concerned that they didn't even know there was a new version coming out!

 

I realise you can't be held responsible for EFI and also that they can't be responsible for you, but I have great concerns that if you don't talk to each other about such things, your shared clients (ie, me), will be left in the lurch.

 

Even if you took a completely selfish viewpoint, the more you work together to develop both your products, the more opportunities there would be for future sales.

Thanks for the reply Dan.

 

I recently spoke to a Printable employee (didn't get his name) on your stand at IPEX about this picture fit problem and he told me there was a new version coming out. He then raised concerns about whether the new version would work properly with EFI's Digital StoreFront (which is in our configuration). I immediately went over to EFI's stand and spoke to David Minnick, who is a Product Manager for Web2Print. He was concerned that they didn't even know there was a new version coming out!

 

I realise you can't be held responsible for EFI and also that they can't be responsible for you, but I have great concerns that if you don't talk to each other about such things, your shared clients (ie, me), will be left in the lurch.

 

Even if you took a completely selfish viewpoint, the more you work together to develop both your products, the more opportunities there would be for future sales.

That may have been a miscommunication or misunderstanding. I can assure you that we do communicate with EFI about new releases, as they are a valued partner.