Thumbnail Image

Please be warned: I am new to Omeka and the whole concept of website building.

I am uploading images of newspaper articles for my web archive and the thumbnails are displaying blurry text from my image. Is there any way to alter what is shown as the thumbnail image? I.e. can I zoom in on the headline, for instance? Does anyone have any tips on how I can get my thumbnail to display clear text rather than blurry text?

Hi jmonjeau,

First of all, thanks for trying Omeka! We'll try to help as much as possible.

There currently isn't a way to alter what is displayed for the thumbnail image. Omeka takes the uploaded image file and created derivative images that are reduced in size: fullsize, thumbnail, and square_thumbnail. Omeka also keeps the original, archival file that you upload.

You can modify your theme, however to display the fullsize image instead of the thumbnails. If you're using the default theme, you'll need to open 'themes/default/items/show.php' in a text editor, find the following code:

<div class="element-text"><?php echo display_files_for_item(); ?></div>

and change that to:

<div class="element-text"><?php echo display_files_for_item(array('imageSize' => 'fullsize')); ?></div>

Notice that I put "array('imageSize' => 'fullsize') inside that display_files_for_item function. This tells that function to use the fullsize file for images.

Hope this helps!
Jeremy

There is a way to hand craft your thumbnails but it is labor intensive. If you are comfortable with Photoshop or another image editing program, you could follow these steps:

1. Upload images as usual to Omeka and let it make the thumbnails.
2. Using FTP, download the thumbnails you would like to tweak. (You want to download these premade files so that you have the custom thumbnail filename that omeka makes for them.)
3. Open up each one in Photoshop and replace the image with your custom image (ex. zoomed in on the headline, etc). Save.
4. Use FTP to re-upload the new thumbnail files back in to the thumbnails directory and overwrite the old files.

I did this for just a few items where the original thumbnail looked especially dopey -- usually in where the square thumbnail was cropped.