Allow images to portrait/horizontal

Hi,

when building a Views Slideshow based on ratings, post date or other automatically evaluated criteria, there's no way to limit the slideshow to an aspect ratio like "portrait" (height larger than width) or "horizontal" (width larger than height). Thusly, the slideshow frame either jumps in height, or consumes lots of empty space (e.g. with option "Make the slide window height fit the largest slide" checked and when a horizontal image is displayed within a set containing portrait format images).

I've wrapped my head around this for months and wasn't able to came up with a workable solution (e.g. by the theme's design, or by trying to evaluate width/height data from 'EXIF' module). No matter what I tried, it looks either awful, or doesn't work reliable. Thus I'm asking for a (hopefully very simple) feature which allows to limit a Views Slideshow to either "portrait", or "horizontal" images (Of course nothing of this is an issue, when the slideshow images are bein solely manually chosen).

I believe, an algorithm for this this will be extremely simple. In a shell script I'd probably use the 'identify' command from ImageMagick which outputs width/height information (third column):

IMG_3985.JPG JPEG 1200x1600 1200x1600+0+0 8-bit DirectClass 353KB 0.000u 0:00.000
IMG_3987.JPG JPEG 1600x1200 1600x1200+0+0 8-bit DirectClass 792KB 0.000u 0:00.000

If first value < than second value => format "portrait"
If first value > than second value => format "horizontal"

Probably in PHP a similar easy function exists?

I'd be really delighted if someone would consider to add such an option to the 'Views Slideshow' module and hope that this feature request is not outside the scope of this module.

Thanks! -asb