I'm currently forced to do this to get a disc path that I can send to CE Image for resizing:
{exp:ce_img:single src="{product_carousel_images limit='1'}{slide_image}{rel_path}{/slide_image}{/product_carousel_images}" width="320"}
I though there was a way to do something like
{exp:ce_img:single src="{product_carousel_images limit='1'}{slide_image:rel_path}{/product_carousel_images}" width="320"}
But that does not seem to work. It'd be even better if I could do something this:
{exp:ce_img:single src="{product_carousel_images:1:slide_image:rel_path}" width="320"}
But that is a different problem.
For various reasons using remote images is not an option for us - we use a BasicAuth on all of our sites during development, and it a hit to performance to load massive images over HTTP then re-cache them, when they can easily be loaded from local disc.