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Issue 24.4 ('Encryption')
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COLUMN

Generate Cover Images

Tools xDev Uses

Issue: 24.4 (July/August 2026)
Author: Marc Zeedar
Author Bio: Marc taught himself programming in high school when he bought his first computer but had no money for software. He's had fun learning ever since.
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 9,916
Starting Page Number: 50
Article Number: 24407
Resource File(s):

Download Icon project 24407.zip Updated: 2026-07-01 15:25:52

Related Link(s): None

Excerpt of article text...

Today's column is less about specifics and more about a general process. It's about how I let something intimidate me and waste hours of time.

For over 20 years, the process of generating the xDev website has involved me updating the pages each time I publish a new issue of the magazine. I have automated many aspects of this with small Xojo apps that help generate HTML and massage raw data into the formats required by the website.

But one part I never automated was generating the cover images. For each new issue, I have to create three sizes of the cover: a "huge" one for PR purposes, a "large" one for use on the issue's main page, and a "micro" thumbnail for the site's navigation section.

The process was never difficult, just tedious. Once the issue is finished, I open the PDF in Adobe Photoshop to generate a bitmap of the final cover. This is created at 300 dpi (dots per inch) and is quite large (2250?*?3000). I use Photoshop's resize tool to reduce it to my "huge" size (700 x 933) and I export that to JPEG.

Next, I reduce that size even smaller to 308 x 411. This is what I call "large." It is also exported as a JPEG.

The cover thumbnail is a tiny GIF at 82 x 109.

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