OK OK........the subject line was just to catch attention. ;)

I was browsing through the photo gallary today like I do everyday. Since it is impossible to view all, I use a certain not very scientific method of browsing the image.

First thing I do as soon as I come from work is take a picture out of collection, shave , crop, edit and frame it, if necessary, it all takes about 10 to 15 minutes and bingo......... 200x200 I make an interesting crop out of the image itself or, I make an interesting crop of the image and size it 200 x 200 and post the image. In all I take 20 minutes and my composition for the day is done. It is like a ritual for me and I look forward to it everyday.

Soon after I post, the next thing I crave to do is, look up images in the gallary and I first go through the thumbs, then the titles and sometimes the artist name, right click the image ..... Open as new page...... not all the images. Only those that are attractive or interest generating in the thumb itself.

Today, I decided to open all the images without any prejudice and view all images or only as many as that can be opened from the immediate front page and I was in for a surprise.

Some of the images posted in the not so very interesting or attractive or interest generating thumbs were marvelous photo work. I was astonished that there were no comments on two such wonderful images which I even voted.

I think, more or less, we all follow the same pattern with a little bit diffrence but overall it is the same.

The thumb has to be interesting if you want better viewership. Not that better viewership or comments are going to change anything but the fact that if I were the photographer of the two images I am talking about, I would have suffered a serious setback or complex. I mean, like it or not I post images and I put in my bit in composing it and capturing the image and post work on it and after satsfying myself that the peice of work is good , I go ahead with it and if I don't get acclaimed I feel rejected or I feel I was lacking somewhere. I treat the particular post as below par whereas it may not be so.

Today, I realised something, it is not the beauty of the work itself that counts but a lot depends on how you present it and the THUMB NAIL plays a very vital role in this regard. If you can't make an interesting thumb, you are bound to be ignored and for that none else is to blamed but the artist itself. An artist or photographer who works so hard in working on those images should work a little more in improving their thumb and coming out with something interesting. Afterall , there is no better marketing than self marketing. By marketing I mean, to reach out for th viewers attention. With a better viewership, you get a better response and a more balanced view on your work.

Like it or not, it is the RULE OF THE THUMB, which makes a lot of diffrence.

The reverse of the same is equally true. The work posted may be very below par but the thumb maybe interesting , thereby generating more viewership. ( If you go through images with suggestive titles and suggestive sexual crops you will realise what I mean.)

I would like to know from everyone what your views are in this regard. Am I right in asserting that it is not enough to be a good artist but you should be a good marketier too?? What good is an art that never gets viewed??

Please feel free to express yourself, even if you disagre with my views.

Thank you.

:O))

SNAKEY

Oh Snakey I wish I had my DSL back!!!!!!!!!! I would have beat you to this! I have been looking at images that are even interesting in the title, however, and I know you all don't know this, I work two jobs, being a single mom with two boys, putting them through Boy Scouts. I also have two dogs and I am supposed to find time to do my work out exercise on my rollerblades and whatever else comes down the pike. Now add in my photo shoots and my little road trips and I don't have a whole lot of time on my hands! I go through that gallery thoroughly about once a week. Unfortunately the rest of the time, I barely make it through my favorite artists, as that list is getting rather long. OK got to run now, shoot scheduled in about a half hour! Luv ya! Nilla :)

Oh and one more thing? hehehe! I average 4 hours of sleep a night but require 8!!!

Hehe ... know that 4 hours Brenda .. sigh About that thumbs Snakey: you're right, but. :-) There had to be a "but" ya know? In some other gals, there have been real-thumb-wars. The thumbs had been better than the images - just to draw attention. Some even got that far as posting "wrong" thumbs just to lure people into the shots. So to me the only true and honest way is to just resize the image. If that doesn't draw attention, it's because of the shot beeing not to well (composed) and i feel that's ok. Take a view on the other side: often i'm very disappointed about what i see after clicking on a thumb. An example: i see a big bugger .. to me an immediate click. Afterwards .. the bugger is still at the same size, just more things surrounding it (usually ruining the image). A sure way for that author not to get any more clicks by me. I'm a fan of WYSIWYG. ;-) But that's just me. Tom

Tom, I think I agree with you........ a real honest way is to put a resized image of your work instead of luring with cropped thumbs. Also , 200 x200 is a big enough size for anyone to jsut shrink the image to size and post it. I honestly feel that many who are posting smaller thumbs are doing so out of some confusion in their mind. I will send you a link via I M tom, view it and check the thumb and image both. I really feel sorry for this artist. Whereas, it is a shame if people are using unfair means to just lure viewers , I think some artists are being unfair to themselves by posting such ill made thumbs. SNAKEY SNAKEY

good observations... we've discussed this a few times here, the thumb can make or break an image kills me to see a excellent photo hidden under a shoddy thumb & a disappointing waste of time vice-a-versa that's why i prefer to reduce the whole shot like thomas... WYSIWYG! :]

Hello Snakey, i think it's fine that you sent the linkage via IM. The artists may not like to get their work discussed over here. But as my answers are true on a lot of other shots too, i give it into the forums. I hope this is ok with you! :) In both cases, the images themselves are quite big. Nr. 2 is almost at the limit of 500kByte (no need to be THAT big). First, that is a reason for lot's of people not to look into the big images. No problem with DSL but there are people on dial-up (as Cindy for example). Second, this can be a problem with the thumbs as there is a limit of 15 kB too. If you can't get the image into a reasonable size, chances are that you can't get a 200*200 thumb beyond the 15k-limit. I've once asked the same question to an artist. He answered: my thumbs keep getting 40kB and bigger .. all because of not getting jpg-compression to work. That has been a reason for him to use a very small (and very ugly) thumbs. Bad thing as the shots were great .. as are the ones you've posted. Yep, those people need help .. thank you for giving it to them! :-) Tom

Oh .. i've forgotten something else: i tend not to comment on images that have no text with em. Just posting the image without saying a word looks a little rude to me. Like "Love it or leave it, doesn't matter to me" ... sorry, but that's what i feel sometimes. May be another reason for the lack of comments on at least one of your examples.

Tom, Probably that's due to difficulty in language perhaps or let's say, not everyone is good with words. Expression is an art and some may not be good at it. Some people give toooooooooooooooooooooooooo much text with image and that is boring too, cause sometimes the whole text is beyond my comprehension. In this connection I would talk about Poser works, some of the poser work have so much text about wickan storys, black magics and the chracters and stuff, now, I am totally unaware of that part of art so I find it beyond my comprehension. But after said all that I would say...... it really makes an interesting post if there is a little text with the post itself........ either about some technique involved or how it was composed or why that pic was special to them etc etc., snakey

Yeah! Im totaly agree with you Snakey . It's not hard to take the time to make a little 200 X 200 thumbnails for a post. /That help for the number of viewings./ For exemple. When im looking at the renderosity photography gallery, if i saw a post with no thumbs, most of the time im looking at the title. So if the title is not realy good, there is no chance for me to click on that link. A thumbnail is more appropriate than a title. (it's more visul)
Okay. I understand that is not everyone who have a fast internet connexion service here. But the thumbnails cant be more bigger than 15 ko. Im sure that most of the time, people are not posting a thumbnail, because they dont know how to optimize it. It's not hard. You can do it in image ready. <-- on your scene, click on the tab Optimize. You will now have 2 views. <--Normal and optimized --> Then, to reduce the size of the picture, there is a special pallet option for this (called :: OPTIMIZE::) If you didnt see it, go to <-- window <-- optimize. Then, change the Format to .jpg , play with the Quality settings and with the Amount settings. At the botom left of you scene, you will see the new size of the picture and the downlaod time for the internet connexion selected. After this, when you thum is under 15 ok, you just have to do a <-- save optimized has... . Save the picture in .jpg and your done with your thumb.
I hope that will help some people. Sorry if is too long. Blush
Beno Roberge

Hi: As a new member here and still not up to snuff with the digital world, I'll apologize for my lack of "thumbs" to introduce my photo's. Most of what I'll be posting here are scanned images from my prints. I have my own darkroom and yes, I work mostly in negative and slide films rather than digital. I promise as soon as I get the hang of making thumbs, I'll start including them. Until then, I hope my tittles evoke enough curiosity to attract attention.

subject ought to be "rule of thumbnail shots". for there are many rules of thumbs in the art of photography. if the thumbnails are bothersome here in the photo fourm or gallery. talk to the Admins , i'm sure they will take there months of time to solve their problem. if you shoot a perfect shot, you really shouldn't have to crop it because of their thumbnail rule. thats one reason i never post here any more and have my own site. where people can see the the big thumbnails and really see the big shots, without the cropping. don't be surprise if they change the rules on you again, like they have before.

you don't have to crop the shot for a thumbnail when you use "save for web" option in PS to keep it under 15kb & it can be any size either way 200X200 max

Well, sometimes I just reduce the image, and sometimes I crop the shot. I mostly crop when it's a collage sort of image and the details of the image just won't show up well in the 200x200 format. Maybe this is a bad idea in that I have had comments on some of these that the thumbnail doesn't give the viewer any idea of how great the image is. (And, that's a nice comment to get ...). On the other hand, I kind of like it that the viewer gets a surprize .... something that they really didn't expect.

I agree with many things that were said here but don't forget one thing though. Unless your picture is top notch one and you have the word "professional" that come before your name you are not going to get more than 4 or 5 comments if the people around don't know you... I am not saying that to upset people. It is just a reality! Sorry but i tend to get upset when i see an ordinary snapshot of a cat that get more than 25 positive comments!

*Yeah. There is a lot of things here that were said. All are good. Oh! and sorry i forgot yesterday. When you resize you picture (thumb) in potatoeshop or image ready, i mean i you resize the big shot to 200 X 200, sometimes the picture will be kinda "blur". You can solve this problem in only one step. Go to <-- filter <-- Sharpen <-- Unsharp mask or <-- filter <-- Sharpen <-- Sharpen. You can also try sharpen edges and sharpen more. Most of the time, you will get a good result. :)

Beno Roberge*

here's a gripe that i found a bit irritating... "its not great but i just wanted to upload something" i came across this statement under one of the photos... made me think- what a frickin waste of time the person was right, the pic wasn't very good just adding to the bulk of shots to wade through... what happened to quality! what do we comment... yea, you're right... it sucks? or are we suppose to argue, no, it's great, really... not i don't want to squash someone's creativity but you should at least like what you post ...maybe i need more coffee... ;/

Haha. lol. dont worry Cynlee. I understand you. ;)
Beno Roberge

I wish there were no thumbs. On the other hand, It's not the only limitation. Some of my pictures (but I am sure this goes for everyone here) lost some of their impact when resized to fit the screen. And I fit for a 1280x1024 so I allow myself a large standard. but sometimes it's not enough. Generally the number of hits or the number of comments are not a concern for me. Of course I like the comments because this means that some fellow photographers cared. That is great in itself. But it's not the number of them that makes me happy, rather, I am more happy when even just a single one person makes a comment that is deep with insight, than when I get , say, 10 "wows". That is what I do when I comment on other people's pictures, I always try to write something insightful if I can. Something that tells the deep reason why I appreciated what I could see. I think it's a nice way of giving back to people who post beautiful pictures. I regard every beautiful picture that is posted as a gift. A few pictures (here and elsewhere) have been so powerful, that could change my way of seeing things. Other were so resonant with my soul, that make something vibrate inside. How not to be thankful for that? I am one of those that get only 4-5 comments per picture. Perhaps as someone said, it can be because I very rarely write to forums. Or maybe, it's because I am not much concerned by the technical aspects so my pictures do not appeal much to the people who really master the photographic technique (and there are several who are regulars here at Rosity). But as I said, this is not a problem for me. So what is the problem for me? Well, I sometimes have made thumbnails just resizing the full image. But I have found that this diminishes the emotional impact of the big image when you move to it. Once you have seen it all reduced on thumbnail, a part of the power is gone. It's very, very hard to be able to have it back. This is the main problem with thumbs for me. And this is why now I always make thumbnails with crops now. I generally choose a part of the image that I think is an "emotional focus". This way, thumbs become for me some sort of a pre-comment, a non-verbal way to let the viewers know what I really feel for in the picture. But this also is in some way "brutalizing" the picture. So I'm not sure that it's a winning situation. As I said, I just wish that thumbs were not necessary. On a side note, it is sad to see how the so-called "right" thumb can drive more views than other thumbs. A few days ago I have posted to the gallery a picture of a couple I met in the streets. I used for thumb the girl's face, and only for that reason, I am sure, I got twice the hits that I generally have for my other pictures. I am sure that if I posted the man's face I would have had only half of it. With exactly the same picture. If I posted the puppy's face, probably somewhere in between ;-) But there is a justice to it after all: in spite of the many views, the number of comments was the same as the other images, not more. So, I read this like "the people who are really interested, will comment regardless of how sexy is the thumbnail. And this is good to know. The quality viewers of Renderosity may not be many, compared to the casual viewers, but they are reliable and insightful. I still have faith in them. -- Orio

*Yeah! That true Orio. If you want to have a great thumbnail, you have to capture the emotional part of the picture. I know it's hard sometimes but... Another good point is comment or viewings etc... Like you...i dont realy care if i only have 3 or 4 comments. The important point is what the people are saying.That make my day. In fac, thumb are only to give a quick view of what the picture should look like. :) !!!!!:O)!!!!!!!

Beno Roberge*

I just wanted to add one thing that I forgot: often, precisely with the intent of not ruining the impact with the photograph, I intentionally leave out of the thumbnails parts that I want to be only perceived together with the ensemble. So it can be also a matter of hiding things, not only to show them. It's a very annoying thing all in all. -- Orio

True Benoit. A comment by a person that you esteem, can really make your day! Cheers my friend, Orio

Obviously there have been some very good points made....and quite honestly I've never put too much thought into it. I prefer to upload a 200X200 size thumb of the full size image so that people can see what they're getting before they bother to open the image. You get a good idea of what the image is, and if it isn't worth your time you can move on. I do (like cynlee) get annoyed when I click on a detailed cropped thumb and what appears to be something interesting only to find that it was a waste of my time, I rather feel like I've been tricked into looking....and I don't really like that. Obviously some kind of thumb is better than none, but there are some gems hidden in those non-thumbed images, and so I do open them more often than not.... sometimes I'm disappointed and sometimes I'm not. What ever floats your boat.... it really isn't that big of a deal.

i've had more coffee... feeling better... :] really an amazing array of shots in the gallery today, & everyday... inspiring, the quality is quite astonishing! group hugz

You really do have to look at the amount of comments given for a particular image. I know that none of my images will ever generate the views that many people get because a lot of pictures are selling sex instead of an image.

As for macro shots, I believe that most of my thumbnail crops are based on the resized image that I post, but what else do you zoom in on if you cannot show the bug at a size that's gonna dissapoint people when they view the image? Looking back over my works, I don't believe I have the same problem that you guys are mentioning, but that's just my guess.

ALL of my full-size images taken with my 10D are original crop (except "wierd" since it was a random shot just cuz) and I will not stray from that when posting to the web because cropping is supposed to be taken care of while taking the picture and is part of the entire art of photography. I save the cropping for the thumnails almost to make another piece of art. Again, views don't matter if you only have a couple quick comments.

all of my thumbs are of the full image. i use this since it gives the viewer an idea of what's there and they can load the full image for a clearer view.

I upload a thumb of the full image. That way you can see what you are clicking on, generally I do a 200 x 150 or something close, hate those partial croppings, deceiving at best. And there is nothing I hate more then being deceived. I sometimes click on the images without thumbs, but only if the title catches my eye. Deal is if your photography is any good, upload the a smaller version of the image for your thumb, you will generally get more viewings me thinks! And Cyn? I couldn't agree more, if you don'ty like the image, don't expect me to like it! What the he** is up with that? I am also curious, if an image is excellent, you may see 100 viewings but only 20 comments, what are those other 80 people doing anyway? Just wondering!

OK ... well, you guys convinced me. I'm going through my gallery and changing my thumbnails. Sigh.

Well, I don't think part croping is necessarily aimed at deceiving or something. Like I love to put half a crescent of a circular flower as croped thumb. Idea is not to decieve but to view it in a diff perspective. like a half open page of a book sorta and nothing more. You can see the focus of my images in the thumb if not a complete resize of it. My personal experience with thumbs goes like this...... Some of the excellent thumbs of particullary landscape, don't look as cool when the whole image comes to view. Not underrating anyone but it is not deception either. It just happens to be so, thats all. :O)) SNAKEY

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=603639&Start=1&Artist=rickymaveety&ByArtist=Yes

I don't want to offend anyone .. you at least Snakey and i gladly admit, sometimes a cropped thumb is more than ok. I also don't want to say all cropped ones are deceiving .. but sometimes this is the case. Anyways .. all this is already said but (and that's the reason for my lenghty intro into that posting) i want to put my sign to that first sentence from rickymaveety. It's an error most new into photography make (me no less than all others!) ... putting to much into an image. In that case, cropping the whole image and learning from having to do so is a great exercise .. and a lot better than just cropping the thumbs and trying to get two out of one. Cropping is no way to get another point of view .. moving the tripod is .. ;) Sorry, i really do not want to offend anyone but i feel some wise words have been spoken here. Thank you rickymaveety! Need that reminder more than once myself!