[Rehaan]

Dear BHPians,


Ever since we enabled image uploads in 2008, you have contributed more than 2 Million images on Team-BHP.

In order to do this fantastic visual repository justice we've completely reworked and modernized our old PhotoGallery (circa 2012) with improved usability and many new features. This has resulted in a super-cool new way to view the forum and discover interesting posts.

Team-BHP PhotoGallery v2.0

[Rehaan]

5 ways to access the new PhotoGallery feature

1) The Main Gallery

Visit "Photos" on the NavBar at any time to see the Main PhotoGallery, showing you ALL the images on Team-BHP in one place:

2) Thread Photo Galleries

Alternatively, within threads, you can click the "Photos" button to display all the images from that specific thread.
The button also shows you the number of attachments present in that thread:


Clicking that button pops up the Thread Gallery interface:

3) Within Posts

Click any image in a post to load the full-resolution version, enhancing detail & legibility of text.
You can then zoom in further, or swipe left/right to browse other pics that are currently loaded on the page.
Try it on this example below:

4) Members' Pictures

Click a Member's name beside their post and select "View All Pictures by <Member>" to see all the pictures they have uploaded to Team-BHP:


...or you can even do this from their member profile page, which shows total & daily photo upload stats too:



And since you must be curious, click here to view the gallery of all pictures uploaded by *YOU*.

5) New Posts & Forum Indexes

View any Thread Gallery from the results of New Posts, New Topics, Searches, or even Forum Sections by clicking the paperclip icon:

[Rehaan]

Feature Overview

We've designed the new PhotoGallery to be fast & responsive, with a lot of versatility, and no compromises when viewed from mobile devices.


Filter & Search

Fine-tune the displayed results by using the following search fields in isolation, or any combination of them together.
Note that within Thread Galleries the Title Search and Forum Category selections will not be present as they aren't applicable.

Result Chips

These provide information about the number of returned images, search term, selected sub-forum etc, as applicable.
You can also remove a chip by clicking "X" which will delete it from the search criteria.

Popular

A quick way to access the most frequented image-heavy threads & sections.

Thumbnail Size

A wide range of thumbnail sizes to choose from, based on your specific device and personal preference.
Tip: Within Thread Galleries on Mobile, try the "Huge" size to get a full-width scrollable list of images (like WhatsApp).

Sort Order

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Sorting by Post Thanks or Randomize can surface some interesting posts.

Group Results

Care about the date an image was posted, or want to know when you're at the end of today's images? Turn on Group Results, which adds a date heading to the displayed pics.

Back To Top

When you've spent a long time scrolling into the depths of the Gallery, this button will conveniently scroll you back to the top of the page in a flash.

[Rehaan]

Lightbox Navigation

On Desktop

You can use the keyboard left/right arrow keys to move between images, and the ESC key to close the Gallery.
CTRL+scroll will zoom.

On Mobile

You can swipe left & right between images, and either single-tap or swipe up/down to close the image.


You can zoom with a double tap, or pinch to zoom in even further.

[Rehaan]

Nerdy News for Pixel-Peepers

Image Quality Improvements

In the past, the keen-eyed photographers have pointed out that our earlier compression + watermarking solution was degrading the quality of displayed pictures to a sometimes noticeable degree.

We've entirely reworked the image processing workflow. Uploaded images are no longer passed through JPEG's lossy compression twice over (once for resizing and then at run-time for watermarking). We've streamlined the entire thing into one process and tweaked it for improvements.

Results:
- Higher-quality images
- Lower file sizes (ie. faster loading)

In an image test suite of 11 carefully chosen pics, we saw the overall payload size decrease from 2,630KB to 1,776KB with an improvement in quality.

The best part of this news? These quality improvements have been applied RETROACTIVELY! Meaning, that all 2Million+ uploaded images have been reprocessed so that the thumbnail (the image displayed in the thread with the magnifying glass icon in the bottom right) is now the new and improved quality version . This was possible since vBulletin keeps the unchanged originals of all uploaded attachments on the server.

HEIC / HEIF Image Support

In case you missed it...

Originally Posted by Rehaan

Apple users will be happy to know that .heic & .heif images can now be uploaded from your devices directly to Team-BHP!

While almost no modern browsers natively support these formats, we've set up our software to seamlessly convert your HEIC images to JPGs behind the scenes, so you don't have to worry about converting your pictures when creating your next Team-BHP Review or Travelogue.

The upload process is functionally identical, with just the addition of a step where the HEIC files are automatically converted to JPGs before being sent to our servers:

Misc Notes

• For Thumbnail Size, Sort Order & Group Results: Your choice of setting will be remembered per browser/device, and also independently between the Main Gallery & Thread Galleries, since you might have slightly different viewing preferences for each of those.

• The HTML for images within threads now also contains image width & height data, so your browser can render the page without any page layout shift caused by images loading. You'll see a placeholder as well, so you won't overlook any images when you're on a terribly slow internet connection.

• One unfortunate downside is that due to the way Official Review pictures were uploaded earlier (ie. not via the Team-BHP attachment system), they won't appear in the Gallery. However, we preemptively changed this earlier in 2023, so those + all future Official Review pics will display as expected within the Gallery.

• Future updates to the Gallery might include a feature where a caption text for each image is auto-selected based on the text above/below that image in the post.

• Random stat: 20 members with the most attachment uploads...

[Rehaan]

Soliciting Feedback & Suggestions

As always, we're keen to hear what the community thinks.

Feedback, suggestions, bugs, wild ideas, etc. Feel free to post them in this thread.

Guests can reach out via the Contact Us form.


Enjoy the new feature!

[Jeroen]

Excellent feature! Many thanks for all the hard work that went into it!
Jeroen

[14000rpm]

Originally Posted by Rehaan

Clicking that button pops-up the Thread Gallery interface:
Attachment 2531067[/indent]

Yaaay !
I see my car in the gif.



Great update. Really love it. Thanks for the work that it has taken. I believe updates like this are keeping us relevant to current times. The Insta generation only wants to see pix and you are catering to that.

[ABHI_1512]

Brilliant update, for someone who spends more time on the travelogue section and new reviews, this new feature is god send. Thanks for the efforts that have gone into making these nifty touches. This forum is constantly updating itself to the needs of the times we are living in and that is what makes the forum being followed and stay relevant.

Great work

[Dry Ice]

Awesome update Rehaan & Team, very well executed!

Interesting stats about photos uploaded by members. Is there a way to get similar stats for threads? Just curious about the most visual threads on the board. I checked the scale model thread gallery, that has over 22,000 photos! 🤯

[shancz]

Applaud the effort its quite an update

The image gallery, search and lightbox are brilliant.
The statistics on the other hand are quite a revelation.

Looking forward to even more interesting threads.

[Rehaan]

Originally Posted by Dry Ice

Just curious about the most visual threads on the board. I checked the scale model thread gallery, that has over 22,000 photos!

Here you go! These are all the threads with > 5,000 images

[jasonbourne]

Wow.. Wow.. Wow... . Excellent feature. I can imagine the amount of thought process and work that has gone in to make this possible. Kudos to the Team-BHP team!!

[Dr.AD]

This is an absolutely fantastic feature. I totally love it. Thank you very much @Rehaan and the Team-BHP team for adding this feature. This makes browsing pictures from long travelogues or long ownership reports (just as examples) so much easier, and in general, browsing the site so much more fun!

[subie_socal]

This enhances the experience of using the websites. I used to loathe how clicking on each photo would open a whole new tab on the browser. It used to be PITB on mobile devices.

Thanks a ton for this very useful feature, @Rehaan and rest of the team.