Particularly recently, I've come across some images in the Vue gallery I wanted to really look at and study...but they were in excess of 1024 wide! There have been some really huge ones in the gallery, including some around 1700 wide. I don't know about the rest of you, but I have 3 machines at home; a laptop (with it's small screen), a machine with standard 17" monitor, and my graphics machine with 19" square monitor. Are they making huge, inexpensive monitors now that I don't know about? I just wish that folks would take standard monitor widths into consideration when putting images up in the gallery; I find it so distracting to have to scroll to see the other half of an image that I really would like to look at and comment on. In fact, when I see the huge size posted under the thumbnail, I usually don't bother to look at the larger image, as I know I'll be frustrated. Is it just me, or does anyone else have the same opinion??

I hear you.. I definitely think they should make it 800X600 the norm in the galleries...

thank you Djeser zo bring this up. On weekends i normally use our laptop at home. And it's always a nightmare to look at this huge ones. A lot of scrolling and not be able to have a full impression. I think as well that we should lim it ourselfs to 800x600. Full stop.

"Is it just me, or does anyone else have the same opinion??" You and anyone else that has there monitor set to 800 X 600 or 1024 X 768. Personally I have mine set to 1600 X 1200 cause I do way to much art and need as much working space as I can get so no real problem here. Personally I like big images. The bigger the better. So you have to scroll. Hey if you got your screen set to 1024 X 768 your doing that all the time already. What's the problem? Right click open in new window works cause that gets rid of all the stuff renderosity displays on the right hand side. "I think as well that we should lim it ourselfs to 800x600. Full stop." This sized image is lickable on my monitor. Meaning not much bigger than a stamp. It goes both ways...... Whatever fits, If you don't like the size don't look at the image. I don't think we should put even more restictions on a already resticted to death place. A guy takes all the time to render a big image and your to lazy to use the scroll or resize your screen or load it in a new window? What's up with that? See my point? Like this is a art site lets look at art. Can you imagine if all the famous art in the world was 800 X 600 and printed 5 X 4 in size? Don't like it? Move along to the next image, some of us like big images.

We had this discussion already about one year ago and yes, everybody seemed to agree with 800x600 images, mine are sometimes 954 wide (the Vue screen on my computer), but this is acceptable too, I think. What is really unpleasant is not to see an image in it's entire wide, the worse is that often beginners think they need to put such large images. Not the screen size you have is important Djeser, but the resolution of your screen. I think that most people, today, have a 1024 resolution, I use 1152, because I need to work out greater detail. I would love to use 1280 or more, but everthing becomes too small with this resolution on my 17" monitor. So, 1700 images are really too big for every one. For me, there is something simple: If I have to scroll to see an image in its entire beauty in large, I just run away. Scrolling down is OK, but not scrolling right and left too much. Guitta

Pete, could you explane how i can setup my Mac iBook to a higher resolution? Would be great! In fact, what i am doing is not to watch these big ones. Too much efforts to see the whole story. If thats what is wanted, fine. For me it has to do with fairness as well. Fairness to those who don't have such big screens. Or such big graphic cards. And fairness to the storage devices of Renderosity maybe. Their limits will solve these "problems" at one point in time anyway. By the way, when it has to do with "who has the biggest one" i can beat you all. Here in the office i am running my Mac with two graphic cards and two 21" monitors connected. That gives a resolution somewhere over 3000 in width. So what do you want? :-)) Walther

I run my monitor at 1600x1200, but tend to limit my image size to no more than 800x600 for a couple of reasons: 1. Out of respect to users with smaller monitor resolutions, and slow dial-up connections. I want as many people as possible to appreciate my work. 2. So that they are too small for people to print from. If anyone likes my images enough (God forbid!;o) ), then I would freely produce a larger image for them if they where to ask. Cheers

While on the same subject, image size in kb is important. posting something in excess of 300+kb .... is it really necessary?

Yes, I agree with you Beck. It is easy to keep images under 200 KB, a 800x600 pic even under 150! Guitta

Pete, could you explane how i can setup my Mac iBook to a higher resolution? Use your computer at work. :0) Buy a real computer? Like note books. That's what you get when you own one. Don't be surprized. I use them at work. They're crappy but they are easy to carry round so I need them at work. I don't own one and will probably never buy one. I hate them. There screens are useless really. Good for programming machines is what I use them for. Otherwise I use a desktop computer. It don't bother me how big they are. When I go to APOD everyday I always try to find the biggest image there that I can. Now some of those are huge. 9000 X 8000 size. Monsters man. Windows is the problem. Linux has a better idea where your not looking out this tiny little port hole of a window. I guess you can do similar on windows now too. Not really though. more small port hole windows. Just think Free wallpaper.......... Big pictures rock. I have no problem. post away. Don't click the links if there big is all I got to say. Remember this is a ART place....... Remember that. Art takes time. What's your hurry. My web site I get this all the time. I post to 1600 X 1200 in sizes from 640 X 480 and all the sizes all the way up. People complain there is too many graphics? Hello? It's a ART site, go away. It's not like I load 2 images on one page. There is only ever one. Except my home page there is 4 max but they're really small pictures there. If somebody is complaining about my huge sizes here BTW they where requested that size in the first place cause they got used on other peoples projects. Can't see how though they are buried at the back of the pile.

Pete, I don't appreciate your comment about being too lazy to scroll. That's not the point. If I set my resolution too high, the details in the picture become so small I can't see it that well. I don't mind scrolling some, but when a pic is 1700 wide, I just can't see the entire thing. I would think the artist wants the picture seen and appreciated. If you want to go to a specialist site of some kind and look at 9000 x 8000 pix, good for you. However, I think Renderosity is more of a general site, with every group from very beginner to quite advanced on it; many of us still on dialup because we don't get DSL; many different levels of user skill and hardware. So laziness has nothing to do with it. I agree with you, Guitta, about some beginners posting huge images. Maybe they don't understand about render and image size. But recently there have been some cool looking images in the Vue gallery that I really wanted to see, but could only see a fraction of, so couldn't get the whole or even half of the picture. What a shame. I'm not particularly in favor of limiting to 800 x 600; some of the pictures I"ve worked hardest on (like latest mermaid pic) I've done at next size up, 850 x 650, I think. But gosh, 1700 is just too huge for me to see. Also agree about size in kb. Only I know that sometimes if I optimize my size too much I get those funky streaks in colors, especially in the skies. So I suppose it's a balancing act.

MightyPete said: "Like note books. That's what you get when you own one. Don't be surprized. I use them at work. They're crappy but they are easy to carry round so I need them at work. I don't own one and will probably never buy one. I hate them. There screens are useless really. Good for programming machines is what I use them for. Otherwise I use a desktop computer." You don't have a Dell M50 then, MightyPete ;o) Cheers

I think we need to be careful to differentiate people who make a big image in terms of file size or dimensions because they can and don't know better and those who do it deliberately because their artwork is very detailed. I was looking at some oil painted artwork today on web sites and the resolution of the pictures was so poor on 640x480 images of large pieces that there was really no point in looking. All of the detail in the orginal had been lost. If there had be an alternative, larger, version I would have happily scrolled around it to see the detail. However a lot of the large images in the gallery lack that kind of detail and could easily be half the size they are. If a restriction was placed on the size of images that people can post in the galleries because some images are being subjectivelly judged to be too large the opportunity for creating detailed computer generated art would be lost. As in traditional art where media and the size of a work are important in CGI resolution, file size and type of file are too. In the end it comes down to both educating artists as to what is appropriate and being prepared to read the information below each thumbnail in the gallery before going to view it.

Just to offer a potential solution to see larger images... If you save the image to your hard drive (which automatically happens whenever you look at an online image anyway but if you don't know where to find it that way, just save it to your desktop or something) and then open it from there, your image viewing software most likely allows you to zoom the image and you can see the whole thing at once. I know Internet Explorer 6 has this feature if you could isolate the image to it's own browser window. I believe Windows XP also does this with it's native image browser but I'm not positive of that one. Anyway, it's not an ideal solution because you won't be seeing the image at it's full resolution and therefore there may be some slight distortion but at least you can see the whole thing at once. Just a suggestion to help those who want to see it all and hadn't thought of that solution. Frank

No Frank, no, no!!;-)

Huh? Sorry Guitta I don't understand. I see the winking smiley, but I don't get the no, no thing. Is there something wrong with what I said? Frank

I'm still on dial up internet service, to me excessively large pictures just take too long to download. There are a lot of others out there in the same boat, I think 460x600 or 800x600 is reasonable. When I prepare my pics for the web I usually size 460 x600 so that people with lower resolution monitors and slow connectivity can still enjoy the pics. With those massive pics that are out there I usually have to open the pic in ACDSEE to view the entire image at once. Scrolling doesn't really do justice to anyone's work, especially for people who don't have image viewing software.

Frank, I have to visit and control some galleries every day. I don't want to save on my HD. That's why the No:-)

Ohh! I see. It was your personal preference not a problem with the suggestion! Thanks for explaining! I wasn't suggesting that as the ultimate solution, just an idea for those that might not have thought of it as a way to see things they really wanted to see. Obviously it wouldn't work for you with that many images to view! Frank

:-) Frank

One other thing to consider in this whole issue is what someone will do with you image after veiwing it. A smaller image is more difficult to upsample and print at a good quality. To provide a super, extra large image would make it a bit easier to print it up and possibly use it for commercial purposes with out giving you any credit or $. Probably the greatest foe to a decent on screen image is too much j-peg compression, that will do more have to your pic than just making it small.