Image handling in Drupal 7

Drupal 7 now has ImageAPI, ImageCache, FileField and ImageField out of the box. This is a huge leap forward in Drupal’s native ability to handle files and images.

This means with the most basic setup you can now upload a picture and automatically create a thumbnail of that picture without installing any other modules. This collection of modules, however, is capable of a whole lot more.

This session will briefly cover the UI tools available for adding an image upload field to your content types and the configuring of image effects to automatically generate custom derivatives of your uploaded images. We will then dissect a typical image generation request and gain a better understanding of what is happening in the background when your images are being generated. This will be followed by a more in depth discussion of the methods available for extending the default set of image effects and how your module can take advantage of the new image handling systems.