Dialyn's right. This has been an argument since I've been on here and probably before. People prefer different methods and different viewing habits. I am the exact opposite than Lon Chaney. Full image thumbnails often don't appeal to me, but for a different reason. I often find them hard to figure out what the scene is about. Some images just don't shrink down well to properly show the intent of the picture. Also, if it's not something that totally catches my eye, I don't look. The same could be said for partial thumbnails, so why legislate which one is right? I do think that one should use a thumbnail that is some part of the picture, unless there is a reason not to. Like my christmas pic (2001) had an elf as the thumb, because I wanted to showcase the elf for christmas, but the picture itself wouldn't allow the elf to be more than a few pixels. So it was a natural progression. But other than that, I always choose a portion of the actual picture (or even the whole one sometimes if it shrinks properly).

To Moebius, I think you are too modest...(not premium? Yeah, I should be so not premium...)

As for a showcase gallery, how about a sidebar thumb that rotates with every page that could show a random artist from a "showcase" list where each artist could enter a single picture that that artist think represents his/her gallery. This would give exposure to single artists. It seems to work rather well in other systems.

I don't mind the favorite artists being public, ahd it is optional. I still wish there was an image thing where one could flag certain images and then get those images later. Sometimes I'm browsing the gallery and the server is either real slow, or time is real short, but I see some great image or even one that I may be able to help with, but I don't have time to comment on it. By the time, I am looking again, I can't remember which ones they were and so miss commenting on many I normally would. The Favorite Image is a good thing as a public thing, but I think there should also be such an image flag feature (a private one). If I made a favorite image of every one I commented on, I'd have a really long list...