Problems with photo height/sizing on home page.

LA Landscapes

I have a photo container on my home page set to "landscape collage."

If I turn off varying height, the photos on the second row don't fill the width of the table.




If I turn on varying height, the second row usually fills properly (Success!):




But sometimes they do this (Fail.):




Obviously, examples 1 and 3 look unprofessional and are completely unacceptable. Is there a way to make the page look like #2 consistently?

Thanks.

annnna8888

Hi Josh,
I'm not seeing on your homepage what you show in your screenshots. Have you made any changes? The only multiple photos content block is at the bottom of your homepage and it shows 5 popular photos. Let us know if you still need help with that.

But just to confirm: the collage layout is dynamic and will usually change the display of photos as you refresh the page. If you need total control and consistency, you might want to use the grid layout instead.

Ana
SmugMug Support Hero

LA Landscapes

Thanks, Ana. I did add galleries so it's a bit different.

In collage mode it still occasionally drops a single gallery down to its own row and it looks terrible (as in pic #3).

And of course I would like to know why Grid view would result in image #1 in my OP.

Most importantly, however, is this:



This is using a collage mode and you can see the photos don't all align correctly. Do you know why this is happening? Thanks.

annnna8888

Josh, the grid view should not result in image #1 from your OP. Can you provide a screenshot of what you are seeing?

As for photos not aligning perfectly: they don't have exactly the same aspect ratio. I had a look at a few photos from the first two rows, and their dimensions are 7317 x 4847, 7263 x 4847, 7360 x 4912. These alone, but especially the first two, vary just enough in the aspect ratio to make the tiles not align 100%.

Ana
SmugMug Support Hero

LA Landscapes

annnna8888 wrote: »

Josh, the grid view should not result in image #1 from your OP. Can you provide a screenshot of what you are seeing?

As for photos not aligning perfectly: they don't have exactly the same aspect ratio. I had a look at a few photos from the first two rows, and their dimensions are 7317 x 4847, 7263 x 4847, 7360 x 4912. These alone, but especially the first two, vary just enough in the aspect ratio to make the tiles not align 100%.

Ana
SmugMug Support Hero

Strange. I always crop proportionally so not sure how that could happen. Thanks.

As for Image #1 in my OP, that is a screenshot of grid view. I rectified the problem by adding more galleries but that's obviously not ideal.

annnna8888

Josh, I'm sorry, but the grid layout will show all tiles in exactly the same size, in the aspect ratio that you specify in the content block - see this screenshot:
http://screencast.com/t/XtOhnjnbfvFh

Your first image shows the collage landscape layout. Can you please go back to the customizer and select the grid layout? You should be seeing what is displayed in the above screenshot.

Ana
SmugMug Support Hero

LA Landscapes

Sorry ... this was a couple days old and I've done a lot since then. The difference was not collage vs. grid; #1 happened when I turned off Varying Height.

annnna8888

No worries! I'm glad the mystery is solved.

Ana
SmugMug Support Hero

LA Landscapes

annnna8888 wrote: »

No worries! I'm glad the mystery is solved.

Ana
SmugMug Support Hero

Well, not really. Because the behavior in pic #1 of my OP still occurs if I turn off varying height. But I'll let it go for now and just deal with the odd layouts the "collage" mode sometimes creates.

annnna8888

Josh, I'm not sure what the issue is. If you turn on "Vary photo height", rows of photos will have different height. However, regardless of whether "Vary photo height" is on or off, the collage layout is dynamic and will change the way photos are displayed as you change the display size or refresh the page. That is the intended behavior.

Ana
SmugMug Support Hero

LA Landscapes

annnna8888 wrote: »

Josh, I'm not sure what the issue is. If you turn on "Vary photo height", rows of photos will have different height. However, regardless of whether "Vary photo height" is on or off, the collage layout is dynamic and will change the way photos are displayed as you change the display size or refresh the page. That is the intended behavior.

Ana
SmugMug Support Hero

The issue is in Pic #1 the images on the bottom row don't fill out the width.

annnna8888

To clarify: that is how the collage layout currently works. The last row may or may not be filled.

Ana
SmugMug Support Hero

LA Landscapes

I understand that not each row will be filled, but in Pic #1 of my OP it's not sizing the bottom row images correctly to fill the row, the way it's filled in Pic #2. You can't look at Pic #1 and think that looks right ...

rnrjosh

It's simply not possible to make the collage layout completely fill every row, in every case. Especially if you turn off varying height. In that case, the height of the rows isn't allowed to change, and we won't crop the images, so sometimes they simply won't fill up a row. By allow varying height, that allows more options for the sizing algorithm to find a size that will fit the images on one row and fill it completely. Also, since you have the ability to limit the image size (you are limiting to Medium), the images are locked to displaying in a maximum size, which further restricts the auto-sizing to choose a size/height that will fill a row completely.