How Contact Image is stored in Active Directory

Using IT Hit Active Directory Address Book CardDAV Server you can display and update an image associated with a contact in Active Directory. The server maps AD Picture attribute (thumbnailPhoto LDAP attribute) to PHOTO vCard attribute. When you update a contact or user image in your client contacts application it is being uploaded to server and before saving to AD it is resized and processed.

Before saving to AD the server will analyze the image dimensions, image format and set image quality if required. By default this is done as following:

  1. The image is converted it to JPEG format if required. You can specify any other image format or you can keep the original image format if required to avoid conversion, specifying server configuration options. Note that JPEG ar GIF formats are recommended according to Picture (thumbnailPhoto) attribute documentation.
  2. If the image is larger than 96x96px it is resized to 96x96px. You can also specify any other dimensions in the configuration file or avoid any image modifications to save the original image.
  3. If the image is converted or resized during two previous steps the image quality is set to 75%. You can set any other quality in the server config file.