Immediately after our 1.0.0 release, we started looking at real world use cases, to see where we could make even more of a difference for WordPress users. We already provide an amazing solution for users who want to roll or modify their own user styles, so we turned our eyes to to the remainder: those users who are locked in legacy themes that can’t support SmartCropped images, or who want to see an immediate improvement without modifying styles.
Version 1.1.0 adds support for focus-based cropping to traditional WordPress cropped thumbnail sizes. Now, when you set a SmartCrop focus point, we also regenerate all cropped thumbnail sizes, to use that focus point. These thumbnails are still traditional, static images, so they can’t take advantage of the responsive control available to SmartCropped images, but they are still a vast improvement over WordPress’ default “center-first” cropping.
Now there’s no development hurdle between you and better images, so get started today, and convert your thumbnails to SmartCropped images whenever you have the time.