For the majority of my site I want to have access to the 4 different image sizes created upon upload. However for images uploaded in an ACF Repeater field with Images I only want those to be uploaded at full size, no other sizes created, because these are only going to be used in a slideshow and only one size is needed…the full size.
If I can find a way to not create the other 3 system sizes I will save A LOT of unnecessarily wasted drive space.
300 slideshows with 6 images on average = 1800 images. If I let WP operate normally that is 5400 images on the server that will never be used.
Any thoughts on how to get WP to not create the other 3 sizes for certain things like one ACF Repeater with Images field but let the rest of the normal post & page uploads create those other sizes?
Thanks in advance for any ideas on this.
If you were talking about not creating image sizes for custom images sizes added with add_image_size(), https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/add_image_size/ then I think it would be possible using acf/upload_prefilter https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/acfupload_prefilter/.
I don’t know that it is possible but in this filter you might be able to call remove_image_size() on the custom sized you do not want to create.
But, if you read the documentation for remove_image_size() https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/remove_image_size it says
Note: Cannot be used on reserved image size names
There isn’t anything in WP that will let you stop WP from creating the 3 images sizes that are built in.
John,
That would at least let me clean up any custom image sizes I had going on.
Based on that…in theory…a possible but complex solution would be to:
– Turn off all the normal “reserved sizes” in the WP Media section under Settings.
– Recreate them all as Custom Sizes in functions.php.
– Setup the remove_image_size for the unnecessary ones when uploaded based on the ACF field.
– And then I would have only the necessary images for the slideshows.
Thanks for your idea!
I didn’t know that you can “Turn of” the normal image sizes. But know, you can’t add a custom size with the same name as a built in size any more than you can remove it.
And to be honest, I’m not 100% sure that the custom image sizes can be removed in the filter I mentioned above, because I’ve never tried it, but I don’t see why you can’t remove them. Even if you do I think you’re going to need to have those standard sizes.
I came across this when doing a search today, I’m sure I’ve seen it before and just forgot. You can probably add a filter using this hook in the acf/upload_prefilter https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/hooks/intermediate_image_sizes_advanced/. It appears that this will let you tell WP exactly what image sizes to generate.
