Posted by ian on Sat, Aug 02, 2025 - 9:23pm

I've found some of my older images need manipulating to white balance - is it possible to manipulate the images (say using GIMP) in the Image Library without screwing things up? I'm not clear on how Image Library deals with images but believe you cannot simply upload new images in place of the old images. I keep my images in a directory structure under file/toys/Manufacturer/Ref/ItemNo...

what I'd like to do is run a GIMP script over a specific  directory and manipulate the images in that directory - e.g. file/toys/Dinky/30f/Item04357 and I don't want to screw up Backdrops way of finding and displaying those images.

Most helpful answers

Full cleaning '/files/styles'

Full cleaning '/files/styles' will lead to a reconstruction of all miniatures (when they are requested on the pages of the site). I just checked on a real site for confirmation, this is true.

What Enthusiast suggested may

What Enthusiast suggested may work. Just keep in mind that Backdrop automatically has created "styled" copies of your images into the files/styles folder. So, if you change the originals, you need to delete the styled versions so that Backdrop rebuilds them when pages that contain those images are visited, using the new original.

In any case, you want to do this in your development environment, not your production one, as things can go very wrong. 

You can edit images and load

You can edit images and load them back to the same folder with the same name and extension, this will not create a problem. Replace directly in the file system, without the use of CMS, for CMS it will be the same file.

Comments

Enthusiast's picture

Sun, Aug 03, 2025 - 4:39am by Enthusiast

You can edit images and load them back to the same folder with the same name and extension, this will not create a problem. Replace directly in the file system, without the use of CMS, for CMS it will be the same file.

Sun, Aug 03, 2025 - 4:21am by ian

I was under the impression you could not do that - don't know where I got that idea from... thought it had to do with the way Backdrop manages image files.

Wed, Aug 06, 2025 - 6:03am by argiepiano

What Enthusiast suggested may work. Just keep in mind that Backdrop automatically has created "styled" copies of your images into the files/styles folder. So, if you change the originals, you need to delete the styled versions so that Backdrop rebuilds them when pages that contain those images are visited, using the new original.

In any case, you want to do this in your development environment, not your production one, as things can go very wrong. 

Enthusiast's picture

Wed, Aug 06, 2025 - 6:50am by Enthusiast

To clarify, I did a similar trick with Drupal 7, when was to reduce the size of many images. I downloaded all the files, reduce with the XNCONVERT, and upload back, receiving a greater savings of free space. 

As for the generation of miniatures, I agree, this is a good addition. You need to remove the contents of  '/files/styles' folder.

Fri, Aug 08, 2025 - 12:56am by ian

Are you saying I can/should delete the entire contents of files/styles? I assume this will force a regeneration of all 'styled" images.

Enthusiast's picture

Fri, Aug 08, 2025 - 2:27am by Enthusiast

Full cleaning '/files/styles' will lead to a reconstruction of all miniatures (when they are requested on the pages of the site). I just checked on a real site for confirmation, this is true.