Re-sizing images in FileMaker Pro: a story September 25, 2007
Posted by Dan Stuchbury in : FileMaker Pro , add a commentFileMaker Pro is not an image editing program, therefore it cannot re-sample images - it just displays the images as they are, albeit within any size constraints you specify.
But what does this mean?
Just because you have changed the dimensions of an image in FileMaker, the actual image itself hasn’t changed, and is still the same size and resolution. A photograph to be used as a background for a report exported as a PDF file, is a good example of how not properly re-sampling and resizing images can come back to bite you. Take the following scenario:
John runs a photographic image library, and has some stunning high-resolution photos that he wants to use as part of his FileMaker solution as a background in the user interface and some of the reports. John enters Layout mode in his FileMaker solution, and imports a master image from his main server. The image is huge (the photograph was taken with a 10MP Digital SLR camera), so John reduces the dimensions of the image using FileMaker’s object size tool, ensuring he maintains the original aspect ratio. Because this image is to be used as part of the cover of the report, John places the resized image in a Title Header layout part, saves his changes, enters Browse mode, and runs the report. A few seconds later, the report is displayed on screen, and the new images looks great. Feeling pleased with his work, John saves the report as a PDF file to his desktop, ready to email to one of his retained photographers.
As he attaches the file to his email, John notices that the PDF file is 30MB in size, but can’t explain how, as he resized the image before placing it on his report layout. He runs the report again, and gets the same output, a 30MB PDF file - much too big to email.
Earlier in the day, John used a couple of other images, which he’d faded, so use as a background in the primary user-interface of his FileMaker solution.
John returned to his ‘Home’ screen, and wondered why it took several seconds to display, a supposed to the instantaneous switch he was used to. He wasn’t bothered though, as the ‘Home’ screen looked fantastic. The next time the phone rang, John pulled up the details of the photographer, and again wondered why it took so long to display the ‘Photographers’ screen (which had a nice-looking background image), and why running scripts that acted on this screen took so long. Finding such slow speeds unusual for his powerful computer, John called a colleague, who asked if John had resized the images before inserting them into FileMaker. John explained what he’d done, then realised that FileMaker hadn’t actually resized the images, just changed the dimensions.
John opened the images in his favourite image editor, resizes the images to the size he wanted, re-sampled them to 72DPI, and inserted the new images into his FileMaker layouts replacing the images he used earlier. He ran the report he tried to email earlier, saved the result as a PDF file (it was a more sensible 30K), and emailed it to the photographer. John also noticed that his FileMaker solution was running as it’s usual fast pace, as it was no longer displaying 30MB images.
The moral of this story is “always remember to resize your images BEFORE inserting them into your FileMaker layouts”.
The same rule applies when inserting images in web pages, including your Ecademy Profile, Blogs Club posts and Marketplace listings.