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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-27T18:42:40+00:00

I’m making a gallery on site. And don’t know what the best solution for

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I’m making a gallery on site. And don’t know what the best solution for it. Need advice.

For my opinion there are two ways of operating with images.

  1. User uploads image. I save it on server only once, only with its original size. And then, when there’s a need of displaying that image on screen I resize it to the necessary size, for example as avatar. So I store only ONE original-sized image and resize it to ANY proper size RIGHT BEFORE displaying.

  2. User uploads image. I save it on server with original size and also make and save several copies (thumbnails-sized), for example, avatar-sized, erc. So that if the image is displayed it’s not resized every time it is displayed, just proper-sized copy taken.

I think that the second way is better. Because there’s no need to spend server strength on resizing images every time. But what if I’ll decide to change design of my site and some dimensions of images on it will be resized too? I’ll get the situation of having lots of images on server that doesn’t fit new design.

All around different forums they explain how to make galleries and every time they say that thumbnail-sized copies are also made and saved. But it looks like it doesn’t make sense if design is changed in time. Please, advise. Language – PHP.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    One solution that others have come up with is a mix between the two. So, the user uploads the photo and you save it in its original form on your server. Then, when an avatar is needed, you check to see if you have the avatar saved on disk (maybe user12345_50x50.jpg – where 50×50 is widthxheight). If it does exist, show that image. If not, then use the server to resize/crop whatever, then save that image to disk and serve that to the user. This will allow you to request any size file and serve it as-needed — taking advantage of caching those that have already been requested [Note that this is a server-side cache, so would apply for all users].

    You sort of get the best of both worlds. You don’t need to handle all of the image manipulation up front, just as needed. The first time the image is processed, that user will have to wait, but any other request will get the processed file.

    One implementation that uses this solution in PHP is phpthumb: http://phpthumb.sourceforge.net/

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