📷 Post image "editing"

[Lanny]

When uploading an image for use in the post header, the user has no control over zoom level and alignment within the "viewport" of the post header. Additionally we never crop images when uploading, so the higher the vertical to horizontal aspect ratio of the image the more data we're transferring that never gets seen.

An ideal solution would allow users to "pan" an image within the post header to select an alignment, and "zoom" to select a scaling factor, then we'd pass this information to the thumbnailer and it would generate a scaled sub-image with the exact aspect ratio of post headers.

We could also build the UI for the pan/zoom and simply store these values, using them to lay out the image in the browser without ever having to touch the thumbnailer. This would improve the user experience but we'd miss out on potential perf improvements.

[robin-macpherson]

Omg this would be SUCH A HUGE improvement to the UX and overall professional feel of the post creation experience. This has been something on my mind for a while but to be honest I assumed it might be a bit "pie in the sky" for now, so I'd love to chat more about this and dig into your ideas @Lanny as well as how feasible it would be/amount of work.

[robin-macpherson]

I also wonder if this would potentially be even more important for inline post images when we build that out for our first premium feature?

[robin-macpherson]

@Lanny I thought I'd upload a nice example of how LinkedIn does this, as it's relatively minimal but works great and was a very pleasant experience. Even if we started very simple with just the sliders for position and scale, I'm sure people would love that:

LinkedIn.Image.Editing.Example.mov