Experimental project

This is a sandbox project, which contains experimental code for developer use only.

PicWall is a Drupal module that provides field formatters for creating dynamic image collages without cropping. It supports standard Image fields, Media fields, and Responsive Image styles.

The PicWall algorithm will arrange the images in the most efficient way to fill the available space without cropping the images. It does work with a single image, but to achieve nicer results, the usage of 5 or more images is recommended.

It is good to realize that due to this dynamic arrangement, the order of images can change when a collage is regenerated. The formatted output gets cached, but after a cache clear, the collage could look different.

Features

  • Dynamic Layouts: Automatically generates optimized collage layouts based on image aspect ratios using the PicWall library.
  • Multiple Formatter Support:
    • PicWall: For standard image fields.
    • PicWall Media: For Media entity reference fields (requires Media module).
    • PicWall Responsive: For responsive images (requires Responsive Image module).
  • Flexible Rendering:
    • HTML/CSS Collage: Renders as individual, positioned image elements.
    • Composite Image: Renders the entire collage as a single, server-side generated JPG.

Post-Installation

When configuring an image or media field's display (for example on a Node's Manage display page), select a PicWall formatter to access the following settings:

  • Collage dimensions: Set the target width and height in pixels.
  • Image padding: Define the spacing between images within the collage.
  • Skip first items: Useful for excluding hero images from the wall.
  • Maximum items: Limit the number of images processed for the collage.
  • Render as image: Toggle between a CSS-positioned collage and a single composited image file.

Additional Requirements

  • PHP 8.1+
  • Drupal 10 or 11
  • picwall/picwall-php library (Composer dependency)

Project information