Hi David! I would like to know if there is any way to increase the quality of the Featured ad thumbnails? The resolution is very poor when compared to the thumbnails in showlistings and viewlisting. I know you can change the width and height dimensions in function.css_listings_horizontal.php but I haven't found anything that would increase the resolution/quality. I've seen similar posts that discuss this issue and how it's a hit and miss when it comes down to compromise when dealing with horizontal and vertical uploaded images. I am aware of that and I can live with it, but the resolution is a whole other issue that hopefully can be resolved. After all...we just want our sites to look their best, right? Thanks!
I can't speak for David, however I do have a great deal of experience in using the TemplateCodes custom plugin as well as my own in regards to the images shown for these types of displays. You need to take into account several things that will affect the quality of the images shown. First and foremost, The images that are used are the thumbnail images. The thumbnail images are created from the much larger standard image that was originally uploaded. The administration settings that you made for the thumbnail of course are the max height and width, but also the new saved Thumbnail quality. Although the general "rule of thumb" to save space for images viewed on the web is a quality of 60, however that is for normal viewing size images. I recommend that you set it to at least 80 or higher for the thumbnails and file size differences are small for the thumbnail size images. Anytime you greatly reduce the size of an image, resolution and quality also are reduced right along with it. If your thumbnail images are set to maximums of let's say, 80 x 80 pixels and your quality is set to 60 as an example, then you use those same small images in the Featured listing plugins and stretch them to 100 x 100 as is the default setting, then you are exaggerating a low quality highly compressed image which will, of course not give you a good result. This becomes even worse forcing the dimensions out of proportion as when the thumbnail is actually 80 x 60 (The image is resized proportional to the original when it is uploaded) and stretched to 100 x 100. Remember that you can't add resolution or quality, you can only take it away! So, the first thing you should take a serious look at are your thumbnail settings.
You can also modify the height and width in modules/custom_plugins/plugins/function.css_listings_horizontal.php In addition the styling around them in the style.css file for that module. As Mike says, the problem always faced is that whatever you do, somebody will try to do different. You tell them portrait photos will look best and I guarantee someone will enter landscape. You can only advise at the end of the day what will make their image look right.
