Quote Originally Posted by njlech View Post
Thanks for the response and the additional question. Yes, my large files are named in a system that I devised a while ago. It follows a certain convention. The small image is in the folder ../accounts/[customername]/[sessiondate]/thumbs/[imagenumber].jpg, and the large image is in the folder ../accounts/[customername]/[sessiondate]/images/[imagenumber].jpg.

The small image (thumbnail) is 150px wide, and the large image is 467px wide. I am a photographer, and I use my site for customer proofs. I need to let the customer see a large version of the image before they add to cart, so they can make any comments about cropping, color, touch ups, etc. I have about 100 images, give or take, for each customer, so it would take a significant amount of space to upload additional large images for everything, according to the Zen Cart convention, when I already have them uploaded in a separate existing folder.

The only other thing I can think of is to add a fancybox script to the product description that shows a "View larger" link, and when clicked pulls up the image in the relative URL path. But I would have to add that into the product description for each product, or insert it into each line of my import CSV before uploading a batch of products with Easy Populate.
So, sounds like you upload two copies of each file presumably after it has been manually resized to your desired size. Meanwhile, you could relatively keep at least your naming convention, but upload one version of your file that is automatically resized for your customer to see smaller versions of your larger photo with minimal loss. If the small image must be different than the larger image (different image view) it too can be uploaded. Yes, it's different than your existing method and would not be of your own creation, but in the end what is it that you need to make money? Something that is quick, accurate, and provides quality product, or something that takes extra time away from your real work, worrying about file storage on the server instead of what it will take to present quality product to your customer.

Sorry to take such a hardline, but I don't see the value in the reasons not to follow some of the above suggestions. There's no reason to cause yourself to perform extra work when there is something that will accomplish the same task at no extra work on your part.