How to use the thumbnail size with catch_that_image

Question

Im using catch_that_image() to grab the first image of posts and use that as a thumb in a loop but the thumb is only 40px/40px and the image has to be scaled dramatically so I'd like to figure out how to use the thumbnail size image that gets stored to reduce scale size. Here's the function.

function catch_that_image() {
global $post, $posts;
$first_img = '';
ob_start();
ob_end_clean();
$output = preg_match_all('/<img.+src=[\'"]([^\'"]+)[\'"].*>/i', $post->post_content,   $matches);
$first_img = $matches [1] [0];

return $first_img;
}

Answer 1

I can't answer your question directly but I will give you a much simpler and more powerful solution to accomplish the same thing.

Create a Custom field in the posts which should display thumbnails in a loop somewhere. Call it thumb or whatever you like. Upload a thumbnail image and paste its full url in the Custom field value field.

Now put the following in your loop where you want the thumbnail image to show up:

<?php $image = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'thumb', true); if($image) : ?>

Set width in css styling your loop to control the size of the thumbnail image. Preferably, create small resized thumbnail images in a photo editor and upload them. It will fasten pageload and save you bandwidth.

The method also lets you display a thumbnail image of choice. You can also have posts without images while they display thumbnails on your frontpage or on other pages.