CSS Help Responsive Theme - css

Question

I'm having a big issue with something so "small" I can't figure it out and I'm reaching out to everyone here. The issue I'm having is this:
I have photos which are roughly 512px or 800px wide I want to fit, CENTERED, in a circle display area and keep my hover effects. I also need to size them the photos so the centered part shows a decent amount of the photo.
The current code I'm working with will make them perfect circles IF the photos are perfect squares. The problem is when the photo is a rectangle, it turns into an oval.
I had created a div like below using overflow:hidden and the css but it conflicted with the current CSS. Any help would be appreciated immensely!
.thumby {
width:200px;
margin: 0 auto;
overflow:hidden;
position: relative;
height: 200px;
border-radius: 100% 100% 100% 100%;
}
img.absolutely {
left: 50%;
margin-left: -256px;
top: 50%;
margin-top: -200px;
position:absolute;
width:512px;
}
Here's the link to my dev pages.
http://www.lmcodebox.com/b-test/index5.html
http://www.lmcodebox.com/b-test/portfolio.html

Answer 1

have you thought about setting the image as the background of the div? This way you keep all the effects you already use and there are ways to manipulate the background position without affecting the outside div. Other possible solution to have perfect round divs, is to use the ::after pseudo-class, like in this gallery tutorial:
http://webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/decorative-css-gallery-part-2
Sorry if I misunderstood you, hope it helps.
PS.: Beautiful test page by the way.

Answer 2

Well first, you'd only need to set the border radius to 50% to make something a circle, and if each corner is the same value, then you can just enter it once like so:
border-radius:50%;
As far as these images being rectangles goes, you could set your images as the background of a span, give it a height and a width that forms as square and use display block. This would keep the photos proportional, but allow you to make them square.
This however, could create a bit of a markup mess if you have a lot of images to display. Another solution, which means more work, but I would personaly do it, is to just crop your images into squares for their thumbnail with photoshop or some other image editing tool.
Above all of that, I don't see a width or height actually declared on the pages you linked. Are you sure you've placed them on the correct class? I see the border radius declared, but I'm only seeing a max-width: 100%; not width: 200px or height:200px

Answer 3

I re-thought the problem with the suggestion of using the images as backgrounds of an element as madaaah did above.
What I ended up doing was wrapping a DIV around my A tag like this:
then, I set the background of the A like this: style="background:url(PHOTO URL HERE) no-repeat;background-position:center;">
lastly, I made a square image (800 x 800) to go inside the A tag so it would keep the round shape and made it completely transparent so the background image is visible, while growing and shrinking in a "responsive" manner.