Photo Cropping Tool
Almost every Content Management System (CMS) we build has the ability to upload photos to the website front end. The challenge in this is ensuring that photos are sized properly and cropped in a way that is visually appealing. As a challeng, we decided to build a photo cropping tool that would allow people to edit photo online, rather than having to use Photoshop or some other offline application. This version of the tool uses JQuery, JCrop and PHP to fully crop photos online.
The photo cropping tool currently accepts a jpg image and a desired width/height. The system generates a smaller image for use when viewing and cropping. The minimum cropping bounds are set based on the original image size and the final width and height that are chosen. Once the cropping box has been chosen, the system crops and resizes the image and returns the final file.
This is a quick and simple experiment and there is a lot of room for expansion:
- Additional file types like .gif and .png
- DPI setting for print or web
- Final image quality setting
- Other dimension measurements like inches (for print)