You need image 'crop' variant types to prepare your pictures for the Web publishing. This depends on the image "holes", required by the Web site layout. For example, let us assume that on all pages of your Web site there are just three types of "holes": a big horizontal one (340x250 pixels), a big vertical one (250x340) and a small horizontal one (140x80). So you need to create three different 'crop' variant types with the specified size in pixels.

To create an image 'crop' variant type

1.Display the variant types as explained in Review variant types, and then, on the Action menu, click New, and then select the New Variant Type Image.

2.On the dialog box, in Name, enter an unique name of the new variant type. The name can contain spaces.

3.Click the icon to display the Steps row.

4.Make wider the dialog box width so you see all the possible steps.

5.Click the Conversion field, to display the list of available conversions, and then select Crop.

6.Enter data in the Width field (in pixels). It must correspond to the Web page picture 'hole' width.

7.Enter data in the Height field (in pixels). It must correspond to the Web page picture 'hole' height.

8.Leave other fields empty, or with the existing values - all the fields but Width and Height are simply ignored.

9.Click OK to close the dialog box.

Notes

The variant types with the Crop conversion step are the particular ones. They are primarily used by the multi-crop dialog box to create channelized variants of the article images. In order that a variant type with the Crop conversion step becomes available to the multi-crop dialog box, you need to assign the variant to a publishing destination. Therefore, when you click the multi-crop command, the dialog will prompt you for the publishing destination, and then it will display the list of variant types, associated to that publishing destination. In such a case, even if you add more steps to the variant, only the crop action will be performed, all others will be ignored. Therefore, your attempt to, for example, add Set Resolution step to the image variant that contains the Crop step, will not produce the result you expect - the generated image won't change the resolution.

Alternatively, the variant types with the Crop conversion step can be used by the custom workflows. Such workflows can read the data from the variant and apply it.