Stock Photography Site (storage)

[SharkBait]

Alright I've been tinkering around with creating my own stock photography site (for my photos) and trying to figure out the best way to handle the photos themselves.

 

Typically a original sized JPG (after RAW conversion) of my photos can be around the 10MB mark and what I thought about doing is upload the original res photo and then use PHP to resize the photo to various sizes based on customers needs/wants.

 

Currently I upload the original size. Thumbnails (at 300px long edge) are shown in a grid based on category or search term. You can hover over the thumbnail which will product a slightly larger photo (again sized by PHP off the original on the fly).

 

When you view the 'details' of a photo, a 600px long edge photo is displayed (again php on the fly resize). Which seems to work fine on a single photo basis. Though, when displaying 12 photos per page (or whatever number) in the grid view and have PHP resize each from their originals to the thumbnail doesn't seem to be the most efficient use of PHP. Though this also could be the development server I run which might be a bit dated.

 

When I upload the original, should I have PHP create a resized thumbail? Or having it handle the original files and resize when requested an alright alternative?

 

When someone purchases a photo, after a sucessful checkout/payment/transaction I link back to the original but resize based on their selection and allow for the download. Is this alright to do as well, or will the PHP GD library allow for too much image quality loss? 

 

Any info/thoughts/advice greatly appreciated!

 

Cheers