A little confused as to what add image size actually does

Question

I have a call to add_image_size like so:

if ( function_exists( 'add_theme_support' ) ) { 
    add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' ); 
}

if ( function_exists( 'add_image_size' ) ) { 
    add_image_size( 'sidebar_thumb', 109, 60 );
}

But then when I try to use that image size in my template...

if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) { 
     the_post_thumbnail( 'sidebar_thumb' );
}

The first image is 80X60, the second is 45 X 60; that's obviously way off.

=The height is right on both images. So I guess my question is how do I get an image outputted with an exact size, and if that's not possible by default, then how would I get the URL of a featured image (the image than the user picked as Featured in the admin section) so I can put that URL into a script like timthumb.

Answer 1

Your not specifying a $crop value so your images are being cropped using a soft proportional crop. Set crop to TRUE for a hard crop.

add_image_size( 'sidebar_thumb', 46, 60, TRUE);

*no need to call function_exists for add_theme_support or add_image_size unless you want to be backwards compatible to pre 2.9.