I have exactly same problem.
I wish Alex Rabe would reply to us. He said he would if I added the nextgen gallery tag to my post, but so far, no reply. This must be a known problem, hopefully with a known solution. Help, Alex!
Airpilot
I am having the same problem. Just started with the new release of NGG. I have several galleries set to automatic slideshow. Each gallery contains 3-5 images of varying sizes. When the browser loads, several of the images are distorted and in some cases missing altogether. Once I refresh the browser, all returns to normal. I have spent all day trying different fixes — resizing all images, uploading new images, changing option settings; to no avail. As I mentioned, worked perfectly in the previous version of NGG so don’t believe it’s user error. Please help.
Same problem here. The NextGen slideshow widget destroys the aspect ratio. You can set the size in the widget, so I tried different sizes to account for my different image widths and heights, but that doesn’t help.
Off topic, but I had major problems with this plugin, like images not showing up, 403 errors (had to disable Flash uploader), etc.
I think I found my problem.
Make sure that this setting is correct:
In Gallery > Options > Slideshow
Stretch image none
All the same, to get more control over sidebar slideshows, here is what I did:
Installed Widget Entries plugin
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widget-entries/
This allows you to create a custom widget the same way that you create a Post. It adds a menu item called “Widgets” to the WP admin Menu. From there you Add Widget and edit your custom widget. This gave me more control because I could use shortcodes instead of the NextGen Slideshow widget.
E.g. [slideshow id=1 w=280 h=259]
To use the Widget you created, you just go to Appearance > Widgets and you will see a “Widget Entry” widget that you can drag to the sidebar. Within the widget, you select the custom widget that you created from a pulldown menu.
And, again, make sure that this setting is correct, too:
In Gallery > Options > Slideshow
Stretch image none
Seems like a hassle, but the Widget Entries plugin is very handy for making Text Widgets that you can edit like Posts, so I am using it for other things besides sidebar slideshows.
About sizes of slideshows and images in general, I find it nasty that you set global settings in Options, and then when you set something else on a gallery, the global settings change. Weird. You should be able to manage galleries with their own settings without that changing global sizes. If I missed something in how NextGen works on sizes, I’d welcome the info. Maybe the ticket is to always use shortcodes for sizing. The trouble is that means teaching my Web clients yet another thing about adding a gallery to their Pages and Posts.
