Quote - The problem is defining "aren't as good as the artist that they're critiquing".   How do you measure that?  And does it include specifics or the whole image?

I guess it comes down to the purpose of a critique.

 

You're absolutely right that there is no reason why you or anyone else shouldn't be able to critique a work of art. Ebert and Roeper disagree about the merits of movies on a regular basis. These two critics hold regular jobs at newspapers and host a weekly TV show to critique movies. Companies are paying them to tell the public what they think about movies. They disagree about films almost as often as they share an opinion on a movie. It's not that they're always just shades apart where one is lukewarm about a movie and one mildly cold. There are times when one will say a movie is the worst they've seen this year while the other will say that it's one of the best they've seen. As far as I know, Roeper has had no involvement in the making of a movie while Ebert's experience was writing the screenplay for "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls", a movie that didn't exactly garner worldwide praise. At a professional level, one doesn't have to have cinematic experience in the movie field to be a film critic. That says that one need not be a Poser expert to be a Poser critic. Ebert and Roeper's disagreements also say that there is no universal standard to measure the merit of a work of art. That basically says that it's an opinion.

 

What's the purpose of a critique? In Ebert and Roeper's case, it's to help save the public from spending money on a bad movie that has a better trailer than a plot. Renderosity galleries are free, so critiques aren't going to save any money. Most of the artists are hobbyists doing this for fun, not for money. There should be a different sensibility to critiquing a work that somebody is doing for fun for free and something that a movie studio spent 200 million dollars on. It's a little easier poking fun at a bad performance by an actor who got paid 20 million dollars than some small artist posting his gallery work. I don't feel bad beating up on somebody getting paid more for one movie that I'll earn in my entire lifetime--the actor can cry all the way to the bank. I don't feel like being critical of an artist that's creating artwork in their spare time and hoping it will find a tiny audience.

 

Since comments are left on the image, they aren't influencing anybody visiting that image. A person ha already have opted to look at the image to find the comment. Leaving a critique in a comment box is a fairly meaningless exercise because it has no impact on the number of people that view the image. The critique is seen after the image is seen. At that point, the viewer has already decided whether or not they like the image. That leaves any critical comment now being seen more as advice than anything. Advice is a tricky thing. Not everybody wants it. I don't know about most artists, but I generally don't intend to correct images that I've put in my gallery. I'd rather work on my next image. Any comments, about specific things that only apply to the one image, probably won't ever be acted on, whether I agree with the comment or not. The Work in Progress gallery is probably a better place to leave constructive criticism.

 

If you follow the link I posted to CGForum, you'll find a render that almost looks like a photograph. That portrait looks more real than half the photos I've taken. Looking at advice being offered by others (too waxy; needs more dirt, etc.), they're all looking too hard to find faults when there's nothing really wrong with the image. The critics are offering advice, but not solutions. For the critique that the skin looks "waxy", what rendering parameters need to be tuned to eliminate that "expert's" concern? The poster doesn't know how to provide solid expertise to fix his perceived problem. That poster hasn't rendered anything remotely as realistic as the image he's critiquing. It's not useful advice to the artist.

 

It's hard to leave a critical comment on somebody's image without either seeming arrogant or condescending or a bit of a know-it-all. It really doesn't matter if it's meant as being helpful. Anybody who tries to find fault with something always will. Sometimes it's better to "ooh" and "aah" something that's really nice than finding fault with it. There's no doubt that, if DaVinci were around to post the Mona Lisa here that somebody would find something wrong with it and suggest how to fix it and at least one person will offer that he lose the smile. There's an unintentional touch of arrogance to offer improvements to a master artist. As much as one doesn't have to be an expert to give an opinion or a critique, there are times when maybe it's best not to.

 

It's a touchy thing offering artistic advice to somebody who is inexperienced because they're too enamored with what they've produced even though it's fairly rudimentary. Is there any real value in commenting on something in an image that is so obviously flawed that it's hard to imagine that the artist didn't see it? The artist clearly should have recognized the problem and it's doubtful that pointing it out to the artist will make it any more self-evident. If somebody has a portrait with the default Face Camera fish-eye effect, worthwhile concrete advice would be how to fix the focal length. That's something that can be acted on by the artist. If the lighting is off and the setting would work well with a free light set, a link to those lights should be appreciated. Offering a link to a tutorial that would correct a problem should be good. Any other advice becomes questionable. Is the critique truly providing useful actionable helpful advice or is it just showing off one's professed knowledge base? 

That's the logic train that I eventually took to providing compliments on what is right in an image if I'm going to leave a comment.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon