Plugin idea! Server-based, template-enabled image processing…

While I am a web developer in the sense that I know HTML and CSS like the back of my hand, I am a designer first and foremost and have never wanted to delve into PHP territory. That’s one reason among many that I’m not the person to actually execute this idea, but I think it has legs.

PROBLEMS:

1. WP end users don’t know how to properly edit/optimize photos before they upload them to their sites, and WP doesn’t do the best job at these tasks either.

2. Most sites do well with a specific image size/aspect ratio, which is why the above skills are needed, AND Retina/resolution independence is becoming more and more relevant to web design.

SOLUTION:

A plugin that allows the site designer to create image processing “templates” for the site in question. Let’s say, for example, that I’ve designed my site to leverage a decorative 300W x 400H photo on most regular site pages, which therefore needs a 600W x 800H version for Retina devices. As a designer, I can create these images pretty quickly in a number of ways – Photoshop (with or without batch processing), freeware/shareware image processing apps (I’ve been through a few of these over the years), etc.

But the client is usually going to be clueless about the proper way to create such images – they’re limited to uploading them full-size (abort! abort!) and using WP’s “humble” cropping features. Fine for a casual blogger, maybe, but not a business owner who cares about their brand.

So this plugin would allow them to choose the “Main Page Image” template (that the designer created) when they upload an image directly to a page/post, and an engine sitting on the server will employ the parameters that the designer has set up to crop the photo (and of course it would be great if there was a mechanism to let the user choose the crop zone) and output right-sized, sharpened, optimized JPGs.

That’s all. Comments welcome. 🙂