I need some help from someone out there. I have taken over / decided to do something with the FileMaker DB at our plant. I am in the middle of rewritting one where the user will be inserting up to 31 pictures in one layout. Past experience tells us to keep the file sizes as small as possible with keeping the resolution up to make the document usable and the DB functionable.

The users I have are complaining about having to take the pictures and use a third party source to compress the pictures before inserting them. Is there an economical plug-in that I could set up on a script trigger to run after the container is modified to automatically compress the picture?

Well it depends on why you need the compression in the first place. If it is because of load time in FileMaker, then you may want to take a look at 360Works Super container. Super container automatically creates smaller sized / compressed images that can be used in list view, as thumbnails, etc.

What I need it for is when I am going to print the layout with all the pictures or when we are browsing records it takes a long time and then the users complain. If I tell them that it is the picture size and do the compression, they complain. Basically I need to get the complainers off my back while I try to learn the program.

Well I suggest you download and try super container. They have a free download with which you can test pretty well.

"You can import a folder of image files into a container field... In addition to the file content, you can also import information about each file: the filename, the file path, and (for picture and movie files only) a smaller thumbnail image."

... from FM Help. Search "import folder" for the complete remarks.

If you can adapt your routines around imports, you might get by without a plug-in.

I have make some version for this task.

Take a look HERE