Why are the images stored under the portal in 3 different places??? This will be a huge penalty as larger and more images are added. What's the reasoning behind this?

tclaffy

The reason to store image in 3 different sizes is

1._thumbs folder: is for displaying in default view ( images in this folder was resized when you upload or doing maintenance), this will be loaded quickly in the browser since each image just 2-3 KB (100x100 is the best size in my experience)
2. normal: (in gallery\your-module_folder) when your visitor wants to view image in browser size it would be displayed full screen (normally 600-800px, and the size around 50-60 KB)
3. _sources folder: when you allows visitor to download the image with original size.

you could choose to keep source (image to be stored in _source folder in original size) or not. If your gallery is for displaying only (don't need to keep the original image, this folder will be empty)

Tam

 

But there is no option to "choose" whether to keep source.  The module setting "IsKeepSource" is not visible / settable in the configuration screen and is hard coded to be "True", that is, keep the source. Please re-instate the "Keep Source" option in the configuration screen so that we can choose whether or not to store 3 copies. If admin chooses NOT to keep source, then only 2 copies: thumbnail and resized would be kept and the largest file would be deleted after upload.