This will truncate a longer string to a smaller string of specified length while replacing the middle portion with a separator exactly in the middle.
<?php
$longString = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789z.jpg';
$separator = '/.../';
$separatorlength = strlen($separator) ;
$maxlength = 25 - $separatorlength;
$start = $maxlength / 2 ;
$trunc = strlen($longString) - $maxlength;
echo substr_replace($longString, $separator, $start, $trunc);
//prints "abcdefghij/.../56789z.jpg"
?>