Quote - The resizing thing is an offense to the artwork and artists. There's neither benefit for the site performance, nor for the artwork! To set the width attribute to 700px is just to protect the site layout/design. So it seems, the site design is more important than the content/artwork displayed! ???

I have to agree. The art should be paramount in the gallery and the gallery layout should be designed to display the art at the highest quality.

WILLIAMSN: Hello. You are the site administrator? It amazes me, sir, that you give such a deaf ear and little, if any, real creedence to opinions offered by all above. Some are qualified programmers, as well. Yet, you seem to easily disregard, without much respect even, their credibilities.

I also read numerous artists above commenting on what 'they' see on their monitor screens. I have the same problem(s) mentioned by those above.

I ran a few businesses in my day and LORD knows I sure am not the brightest bulb in the room, but my eyes see what they see, as do many, many others above. It boggles the mind how you can readily dismiss all commentaries above, my good man.

Your P.R./public relations skills lack mightily, from my humble perspective, sir. If you are the 'face' of renderosity, I suggest they can do better.

Just one person's simple thoughts.

With all due respect, TallPockets.

Quote - Just before the shut down yesterday I came up with a CSS solution to the auto 700 pixel width (image resizing) thing. Once the galleries are back up and I've finished work, I'll post the result.

Hi have you any news about your CSS test?

I was triyng too trick with css style but without any result on the 700 pixel limitation issue

Quote - Q.      Why are you resizing images? 

       A.     There is no resizing algorithm in the gallery software. You are viewing the full-size image, we have instructed your browser to display it at a smaller width. If you are seeing jagged edges, you might investigate the resizing algorithm of your browser. Last night all the images we looked at in Safari, Firefox (Mac and WIndows), and Internet Explorer (Windows) looked absolutely fabulous.

It might also be a problem with your screen depth settings (16-bit, 32-bit, etc).

Just a suggestion. But we aren't resizing. Your browser is.

@Stacey: This information is incorrect.  It's obvious these are the words of one extremely naive williamsn.  We already know the issue is with Windows or earlier versions of the Mac OS.  Please do members here a favor by removing the above from your gallery FAQ sticky.  It is disinformation at its finest; never mind the fact that it's an outright lie, and will only cause confusion.

Well... I think we could recognize one side of this matter which is not so bad, that is, given that the downloaded images are actually at the original size, we can save them directly from the picture page (no need to display the "zoomed", aka un-resized, for this) -- the resulting image will be the original one that we can then display with our preferred software just the way we like (at least IE works this way)!

Not that I changed my mind though, I'd still prefer to see the original in the browser in the first place...

But this is presently a better way than the "zoomed" one, IM(very own)O.

Regards,

Stefano

I don't like the resize-thing but understand the purpose from Rendos view.
Making the browser resize the image is a poor solution (52 reasons why already stated in this thread).

BUT - if you decide to stick with it then please take a look at how CG-talk has solved the resize issue. The resized images at CG-talk look great (their forum software/server resizes the images and not the visitors browser).

Quote - BUT - if you decide to stick with it then please take a look at how CG-talk has solved the resize issue. The resized images at CG-talk look great (their forum software/server resizes the images and not the visitors browser).

Rosity considers the way they are doing it to be the right way and everyone else that's doing it correctly is wrong. Haven't you realized that already..LOL

I will get with the programmers to discuss this please just be patient and I'll see what I can do

Thanks

Just a proposal: Example for proper anti-aliased rescaling with PHP and the GD library 2.x ------------- code example ------------------------------ $source = ImageCreateFromJPEG('test.jpg'); $width = ImageSx($source); $height = ImageSy($source); $x = $width/1.5; $y = $height/1.5; $destination = ImageCreateTrueColor($x,$y); ImageCopyResampled($destination,$source,0,0,0,0,$x,$y,$width,$height); header('Content-Type: image/jpeg'); ImageJPEG($destination,'',100); -------------- end code example ------------------------- No ragged edges here! plus a benefit for slow dial-up connections (smaller filesize) No need for bad quality rescaling in the browser with the width attribute of the image tag in HTML or CSS!

Okay here is the downlow on this issue.  The programmers are going to run a script that will be retroactive and for future images that our software will resize the image during upload. The full image will be the same size, just no way around this because of the tables but they will be clear good quality images and of course you will still be able to click the zoom to see it at full size. But the good news it they will run the script (that may take a day or two) going back through all images to fix and all going forward.  Hope I explained this right, LOL.

Oh and the ebot issue has been resolved today.

3dvice, What Stacey is saying is that we're going to be using a [very similar] script like the one you posted. It will benefit people on dial-up, not blow up the page design, and keep the jagged edges from appearing. You may see some weird things happening with your images in the next day or two as things get changed. It will all be okay. Just be patient , N

Thanks, Stacey that's good news! :)

Thanks Nicholas! Good news, very good news! :D

LOL, well I guess this makes a CSS fix redundant. I'd just finished it off, too.

Now that the 700 pixel dimension is being hardcoded for the gallery presentation page and I can't offer a user-choice solution (via CSS), I'll chime in with my moan:

Forcing art to fit the arbitrary design of a web page is appalling - the fact that it is happening demonstrates that the owners of Renderosity don't really understand the nature of their user base. The fact that the "solution" is to reduce the (unforseen) 'mechanical' harm of the page design demonstrates that the owners don't know how to listen - or just don't care.

Having a uniform page presentation for every piece of work in every gallery is more important than the protests of the artists producing the work. The uniform page presentation serves no purpose other than satisfying some administrator's notion of what looks good.

I'm finding it all rather sad.

there are any number of resizing algorithms (bicubic, bilinear, nearest neighbour et al.) some of which are better than others, depending on the jpeg content. the same is true for gif resizing, but I reckon very few users are uploading gifs. however, the machine will likely use the same algorithm for all images, hence we can expect that some will be resized in a way that may degrade the image. e.g. bicubic is usually good to preserve the smooth gradients of a poser jpeg, but bilinear is often better to preserve sharp lines of a drawing. in any case, this may tend to slow things down, but I don't have any experience with a server doing resize on upload. the other detail (recompressing the jpeg on upload) will cause the dreaded "jpeg artifacts" to appear, hence I suspect y'all won't be recompressing them on upload.

Hmmm... is this going to be THE solution?

I've hoped for options... to me the problem is the resizing itself (of course it's better if it's well done, but this gets me halfway to where I'd like to be... well less than half-way, truly, one step forward and one backward, I dare say...).

Yep! We'll see a better preview (but then, wasn't there a thumb already? A thumb already clicked upon?)...

Yep! We'll save bandwidth... or not?... Well not if one is looking for the true picture, for, if this is the case, we are going to waste bandwidth (as we are downloading an intermediate unneeded something!)! (and this yields slow-down of the service, am I wrong?)

To tell the truth, I'd rather prefer the present situation -- low quality display of the true picture, rather then hi-quality display of a reduced version faking what I'm looking for! Presently I can save the real picture directly (or eventually "zoom in" without further load on the connection), while if this solution is going to happen I would have to download the picture after a completely unuseful intermediate step...

Sorry, but I don't like this solution, though I realize the site would be better looking this way... and yet I still think the first priority should be the pictures have to look good!

OK, but maybe I'm not among the majority... but then again options could satisfy almost anyone of us!

Alas!, easy to guess implementing options is harder work... and full-sized display of the pictures would hardly fit into the new layout...

But can You at least leave us the option among "server resized" vs "browser resized" (I would choose the second on my part, but the first could be a more likely default perhaps...)?

Let me conclude with a big "Thank You!" for Your unfailing attention to our unfailing needs ;^)!

Regards,

Stefano

PS just reading PJF's post... that would be THE solution to me!

I really wonder why having all the pain of producing that bunch of resized pictures (and keeping them in storage, and having to upload first the downsized, then the true picture...), seems all a waste to me!

???????????????

Quote - ... but then again options could satisfy almost anyone of us! ... and full-sized display of the pictures would hardly fit into the new layout...

Actually, full size on the presentation page worked just fine - at least it worked as well as it did in the old gallery. I know this for a fact because I altered my CSS to display the images full size.

The option was there. It worked. People would have been able to choose. The extra work involved for the coders was nil. But now the option for an option is gone.

OMG, PJF!!!!

Can't they think on it just one more time and leave us that option???? I really hope so!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PJF wrote:> Quote - Forcing art to fit the arbitrary design of a web page is appalling - the fact that it is happening demonstrates that the owners of Renderosity don't really understand the nature of their user base. The fact that the "solution" is to reduce the (unforseen) 'mechanical' harm of the page design demonstrates that the owners don't know how to listen - or just don't care.Having a uniform page presentation for every piece of work in every gallery is more important than the protests of the artists producing the work. The uniform page presentation serves no purpose other than satisfying some administrator's notion of what looks good.

I'm finding it all rather sad.

I agree with you completely...this is very poor decision and makes me very sad. Sure, much better to alter everyone's artwork than change the poor php coder's precious web design. Sheeesh!

:b_upset: :b_stunned:

I think maybe you are misunderstanding, cliff-dweller. We will not be alterint everyone's artwork. We will simply be making a third, smaller copy of their artwork that will display within the constraints of the page. Clicking on the image ("zooming in") will still show the ORIGINAL, unaltered, full-size image that the user uploaded, just like it does now. N

While it's not my preferred solution to the issue, I believe that this new actual re-sizing approach will be better than before.  I will reserve final judgement until I can see the quality of the resizing that is done, but I don't think it can be worse than it is now.

Thank you for listening to our concerns.

However, this begs for the question: why can't Renderosity borrow the approach taken at Renderotica where deciding whether or not to rescale the images to fit the browser is a choice each user may make?

I'm well aware of what you're saying, williamsn. I assure you, 3 out of 4 viewers will not be taking the extra step to view the original version of the image...there have already been so many extra clicks added with the whole site conversion that most people will just look at the altered version which conforms to your 700px constraint...

...it's just human nature and when you design these things you need to take human nature into account.

If you'd regularly taken a few hours to browse the galleries you'd realize what I'm saying...some people do that every night, so extra clicks mean you see less artwork...so you elominate the extra clicks where you can...as I say, it's just human nature...

yep, very sad indeed...

Quote - We will simply be making a third, smaller copy of their artwork that will display within the constraints of the page.

Just to be clear - on the gallery image presentation page the artwork will now be adjusted to fit the constraints of the design of the image presentation page. The design of the image presentation page has been deemed to be more important than the image being presented.

So important, in fact, that the coders will be given more work to do; and both the site and the members will have to endure extra bandwidth use to accommodate it.

Imagine you've taken your painting to be framed. You go back a couple of hours later to pick it up and are presented with an inkjet print in a small frame. You are told that all pictures in frames must be the same size ("we just think our one-size frame looks nice, you see"). You explain that you wanted to display your art full size. You are handed your original canvas.

Quote - We will not be alterint everyone's artwork. We will simply be making a third, smaller copy of their artwork that will display within the constraints of the page. N

That IS an alteration.

From a merchant viewpoint, this won't help with sales either. There are hundreds of images put in the Product Showcase to show off skin texture. First impression is everything when it comes to selling a product. A 700 X whatever image does not make a good first impression. Even the market promos are 800 X 800. And the original images there are sized to show details at 800 X 800.

 People view a new product in the Product Showcase and don't react with a WOW! because the first image they see is so small....You can pretty much bet they won't be buying it. Just something else to think about.

Janet

Resizing the image (even with quality) is still a very poor choice.  I want to see the art at its original resolution.  If I need to resize it for easier viewing, I can do that on my end.  Don't make that decision for me!

Likewise, I don't like the idea of you altering (and YES, YES, YES it is an alteration) of my artwork to save your precious page layout.  I know you've put a lot of work into it, but we have collectively put in far more work into our art.  The fact that you're even thinking in these terms when another approach (i.e. that used at Renderotica) is available is a sign of your misplaced priorities.

Yes, it's a free site, so what am I going to do?  Well, maybe it is time to start looking elsewhere, and if I do, I'll be taking my marketplace dollars with me.

PJF, Unicornst and anyone else who objects to this resizing...he just doesn't get it...I don't think he can look at it from an artist's viewpoint...only sees it with a programer's eye.

I wish the admins who are accomplished artists...I know Debbie M. is one and surely some of the other admins are, too...I wish they would step in an assert themselves and stand up for the artists/members who feel so strongly about this...I feel they must understand the problem with this resizing scheme.

PJF, my first reaction was also "think of all the extra bandwidth this will take" and, considering how slow the site speed is, it seemed a bad choice on that basis alone. But then I realized that it will actually probably save them bandwidth because only a low percentage of people will ever click that extra time and look at the full-sized image...so only the so-called "intermediate-sized" image will typically have to be transferred to the viewer...very sneaky, I think...

If you're seeing these pics smooth, Williamsn, then your monitor needs replacing, it has become fuzzy with age.

Either that, or you're in dire need of glasses!

The resezed pictures in this thread, including the ones you showed, all look absolutely horrid!

FYI: WinXP Home, Monitor: ViewSonicVA1912w, 1440x900, 32bit colour.

When everybody else disagrees with you, it MAY be that you're the one in the wrong...

danamongden wrote:

Quote - Yes, it's a free site, so what am I going to do?  Well, maybe it is time to start looking elsewhere, and if I do, I'll be taking my marketplace dollars with me.

If you buy stuff in the store here, part of what you pay goes towards covering the costs of running the other parts of the site (like the galleries). Plus, a store item you use in one of your images may catch somebody else's eye and they may go buy it from the store here.

It's a symbiotic relationship, these galleries are...both sides benefit.

ernyoka1, I believe i read in another thread that he's using a top-of-the-line Mac and apparently it resizes the images with little or no aliasing problems...I think his signature refers to his Mac, too

StacyG, thank you so much for getting involved. Your effort is certainly appreciated. While I think that resizing is the wrong approach, I will defer judgement until I see the effect the changes have on the images. I am still of the conviction that the galleries should showcase the artwork and not the layout of the page. Standardizing the pages in the forums is certainly warrented, but it makes no sense to do so in the galleries at the expense of the artwork.

Well I found another, more important error: How do you GET to the gallery now? The link in the top bar takes you to the old, now dead, link!

Ok, the Shardz-Unit will chime in once again, and I'm sure there will be lots of enthusiastic viewers [sic]. This time I will start with some positivity, and there have been quite a few changes thus far for the better after the conversion. I can imagine what a nightmare this must be to the staff as we all had anticipated it would be months ago.

I understand the concept of creating a presentation page, conforming its' size to a standardization, then implementing an algorthm which attempts to polish it the best it can. What that will do to my 1600x1200 conversions is yet to be seen, and even understanding this concept without really agreeing with it, the bandwidth issue is indeed a valid argument.

Just to view my Favorite Images in my profile, there are four pages to click on. To view images in full original form is yet another click and another image downloaded. This is effectively doubling the load on the servers, time on our side to view them, and just a whole lot of extra clicking going on. The Mouse Over popup stat window was a clever idea to save on some of that non-sense, but I'm already finding it a bit annoying as it gets in the way.

What it comes down to is OPTIONS, as I have posted previously and have always been an advocate of in my relevant membership here. It strikes me funny that the old site had more user control and was more steadfast in viewing images in just one click. The start of this downfall was allowing the extra browser to open a separate window, and now that option has been included in our profile options, we are still essentially opening a new window to see the full image!

When I start to hear of 'hard coding' anything I get nervous because whatever that instance will bring us, we are stuck with it. It's all about choice and opinions, especially in the art world. I like black, you like pink, I might not like nudity, you might thrive on it. You might have more time than me to click around 100% more, or perhaps I might be on Pogo playing games until this is all fixed. =)

Personally, I spend weeks ensuring that every detail in my work is the best I can get it at my skill level, and to have anything altered simply to conform to a silly schematical preference of a single person, I don't believe this is going to work or be very popular to say the least. Hopefully the people will be heard on this issue, and that we can all arrive at a comfortable medium. Slaps forehead

trekkie, gallery temporarily in the "market "server. nothing wrong with nic's eyes. anybody with OS X (10.3/4) and an apple flatscreen will see them as smooth, due to sub-pixel rendering (not available in XP, but will be available in vista).

Quote - danamongden wrote:

Quote - Yes, it's a free site, so what am I going to do?  Well, maybe it is time to start looking elsewhere, and if I do, I'll be taking my marketplace dollars with me.

If you buy stuff in the store here, part of what you pay goes towards covering the costs of running the other parts of the site (like the galleries). Plus, a store item you use in one of your images may catch somebody else's eye and they may go buy it from the store here.

It's a symbiotic relationship, these galleries are...both sides benefit.

EXACTLY! Which is why I put my two cents as a merchant in here.

You get this awesome new outfit and make an awesome render with it. You work hard on it for hours or even sometimes days (I've worked for days on some images) . You're so proud of that image. You come here to post it and BAM! your awesome image that took you so long to make is auto-resized and looks horrible and that great outfit that others might have bought because you made it look so good gets to sit in the MP and not generate any sales at all.

Sorry about all the awesome in the above paragraph, but I'm trying to make a point and not spin the wheel of adjectives. grin

WIlliamN...do all us artists and merchants here a favor. Go to a friends house that has a regular PC like the majority of the people here and browse the galleries. Do it as you keep instructing us to  do it. Click on the thumb and then click on the image to see the original image as it was intended to be seen the first time. Do this on each and every image posted and then come back here and tell us that this works.

I'm about to get even more long winded here...so skip it if you don't care to read it.

When I first came to Renderosity, the one thing that impressed me the most was the layout for the galleries. You saw a thumb and clicked on it and there was the image full size. Most, no...ALL, the other art sites that I had seen you clicked on the thumb and then the image and then you could "zoom" in on the original. So when I got brave enough to post my first image ever, I chose to post it here because of the fact that you did not have to jump through hoops to see the image as the artist meant it to be seen.
No more though. Rendo has joined the rest and it is a sad day as others have said that the people who made this such a great site seem to be more concerned with the site layout than with the art within.

So please...PLEASE...go back to being able to see the image full size after the thumb or at least make it an option.

Off soapbox now.

Maybe they should rename this place to Deviantosity.

From now until I either find another site to post my images on that won't resize them, or the resize is done away with, I'll only be posting 700 pixel width images to my gallery. That way people won't have to do that extraneous click to view the image as intended, saving everyone lots of time.

Now, I admit I'm not the most prolific image poster here, but it seems to me that when more than 95% of the people who post images are crying out against this resize feature, then the smart solution would be to remove it, not look into ways to make the preview look better.

To me, it seems that Renderosity has nothing to lose and everything to gain in getting rid of the gallery resize, or at least make it an option (with the improved resize code) for those who still use tiny screen resolutions.

so.

another layer of complexity instead of just removing 1 line of code and doing what everyone wants.

interesting.

do you like making things difficult for yourselves?

Quote - To me, it seems that Renderosity has nothing to lose and everything to gain in getting rid of the gallery resize, or at least make it an option (with the improved resize code) for those who still use tiny screen resolutions.

Pride maybe? he he.  But think of how many happy artists (who are potential customers) they would gain...

Naw, they are probably scared to talk to Diane and SysAdmin at 'rotica. - That system WORKS!
(no intent to malign, just a certain degree of frustration at seeing someone heading off down what I consider the wrong path)

oh.. and if I'm right, you've doubled (at the very least) your storage requirements with this (2 of every image) and INCREASED server load (resampling the image per upload.)

erm...
simple question.

WHY?

OK, the galleries are back and still seem to be operating without the 700px hard code.

So take a look and see how well the gallery image display page works with full size images.

In the CSS where it says:
.gallery_display_image_cell
insert this: 
**width: auto;
**after the {

where it says:
**.gallery_display_notes_cell
**insert this:
**width: 100%;
**after the {

where it says:
**.gallery_display_details_cell
**insert this:
**width: 20%;
**after the {

I occasionally (very rarely) get a white bar down one side, but other than that this seems to work OK in IE and Firefox.

Save your CSS first in case you don't like it or make a mistake. That's all there is to it.

I'm also only posting 700 pixels wide images until this changes. Like everyone else I work hours to days on a single image and didn't intend to have them viewed smaller than their original size.

Right now the "Delete Gallery" button is looking much better than my art work ...

PJF: How many general users know how to or are willing to take the time to learn to hack the CSS to get the gallery to properly display images full-size?  I'm willing to bet not many.

Greetings,

First of all, I must say that Renderosity has inspired my creative side to a level perhaps unattainable without the interaction with other artists. I have thoroughly enjoyed my experience here. Considering that I am not a paying member, I also understand that this is a free service to me- offered by the folks at Renderosity. Granted I have purchased items from the store, but as it stands, my membership here is not on a level that I feel that I can demand a level of service or support.

However; as a user of this site and by day performing the tasks of Network Admin, Web designer, developer, SQL Server admin, IT Manager, etc.. I have a certain level of understaing of both user need and administrative duty.  To preface this further, I am also cross platform- meaning I have a very deep understanding of Windows Server systems and Macintosh OS 8,9,10.x and Linux. I build from scratch, maintain, develop computers, web sites, applications and service the needs of a large corporation on an executive level. Not to brag, just prefacing my case with evidence that I am speaking from experience.

The pixelation issue is academic- anyone with basic HTML skills knows that forcing a display size for an image that conflicts with it's original size will yield pixelation, even simple dabbling in wysiwyg applications like Dreamweaver or Go-Live would show this, albiet OSX corrects this with sub pixel filtering.  But the point is this- when testing applications one does not only test other browsers, but other platforms- particularly considering the vast size of the Windows user base.

Operating system preference is one thing, ignorance is another.

People who go on and on about how this is better than that are wasting the air we breathe- who cares, its all about what people want to use, and if one prefers to live in the dark and not experience the entire computing realm as a whole, so be it and let them be ignorant of the other side. Those of us who know there is more money to be made by understanding ALL systems will reap the rewards.

On top of this, another very simple issue is present: 

One click or two.

Shall we click on the thumbnail that is interesting, then be presented with a small image, then click on that to see the full image? One click, then another.

An extra step, not there before... Completely unnecessary...

Shall we take the viewing of these works of art and add another step?  Was this step there to begin with? Is it a good idea to add this step?  What is the purpose of this extra step? Is this beneficial for some reason? Why? 

Its one thing to object to change, change in itself is not bad if there is a benefit.

What benefit is to be had with having an extra step to view the artwork here? What benefit is adding the extra CPU resources to resizing an image every time it is uploaded, only to have the very community that provides content overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the result?

Even with a basic understanding of language, it is plain to see that the resizing of the preview picture and the added cursory step of clicking on the image to view the full artwork as it was intended is ticking people off. This is my first message in the forum since becoming a member several years ago- becaus this issue is so irritating yet so fundamental.

Please understand that my language is not meant to hurt or harm, but merely stress the very simple nature of the communities requests. I have posted quite a few works here, and they seem to have gotten progressively better through my experience with this community, and as a result I have a level of concern for how this wonderful site progresses- a vested interest if you will.  

Quote - Forcing art to fit the arbitrary design of a web page is appalling - the fact that it is happening demonstrates that the owners of Renderosity don't really understand the nature of their user base. The fact that the "solution" is to reduce the (unforseen) 'mechanical' harm of the page design demonstrates that the owners don't know how to listen - or just don't care.Having a uniform page presentation for every piece of work in every gallery is more important than the protests of the artists producing the work. The uniform page presentation serves no purpose other than satisfying some administrator's notion of what looks good.

I'm finding it all rather sad.

i second that.

these gallerys don't hold much appeal to me now..I've uploaded an image today & am not happy with the presentation.

Quote - the "Delete Gallery" link should not be so readily accessible in the gallery page,

it does look enticing though...like a big red button you can't help but push :)

I"m another vote For options when it comes to image resizing, and Against adding unecessary clicks to the process.

The galleries should be all about making our pictures look nice - not fitting the arbitrary constraints of the layout.

Please provide us with options so that we can once again see an image the way the artist intended with one click on a thumb.

Thank you.

I'd vote against options & just remove the resizing altogether.

Quote - OK, the galleries are back and still seem to be operating without the 700px hard code.

So take a look and see how well the gallery image display page works with full size images.

In the CSS where it says:
.gallery_display_image_cell
insert this: 
**width: auto;
**after the {

where it says:
**.gallery_display_notes_cell
**insert this:
**width: 100%;
**after the {

where it says:
**.gallery_display_details_cell
**insert this:
**width: 20%;
**after the {

I occasionally (very rarely) get a white bar down one side, but other than that this seems to work OK in IE and Firefox.

Save your CSS first in case you don't like it or make a mistake. That's all there is to it.

 

Great Man!!

It works very fine!!!!