I know there was a major overhaul last june, but I do have one modest suggestion for the consideration of the admins.

I'll often make an image that can easily fit in more than one gallery (a sci-fi pinup, a humourous fantasy pic, etc), and yet I am forced to pick just one gallery to upload into. I would find it preferable to be able to reach all target audiences with one shot across gallery lines. That is, I suggest that the uploading options be changed so that an image can be seen in more than one gallery of the artist's choosing.

I don't know what kind of trouble this would cause on the programming end of things, but some other sites have gallery upload choices listed as checkboxes (allowing viewing in multiple galleries) rather than a single drop down menu.

I don't believe posting something as "unspecified" is an option either. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I make a social commentary sci-fi piece, posting it as "unspecified" won't get it in either the sci-fi or social commentary gallery, but rather would only be seen by  those who choose to look through all galleries.

While in the physical world it is difficult to hang a single painting in more than one gallery, we have no such constraints here, so why have we constructed them artificially?

Doing this would, in effect be making multiple postings at the same time [same 24 hour period]  and unless you have bought into the extra uploads thingy we have you can not do that.Although it would be the same image it would have to be posted in a number of galleries and that would come out to more than one post.

I wouldn't conceptualize it that way. The image isn't posted twice, it just shows up for more total members based on the gallery viewing options they make.

Put another way, if you put "portrait" and "fantasy" in the title of an image and uploaded it, it will appear for people who do a search for either "portrait" or "fantasy", because the image title is appropiate to both searches. 

In terms of gallery upload options however as they stand now, assuming this hypothetical image is in fact a fantasy portrait, when you upload it you can put it either in the "fantasy" or "portrait" gallery. Putting it in one will mean it will not show up in the other, even though it's appropiate to both in terms of actual content. 

In short then, what i'm suggesting is the same level of functionality that exits in the search engine be applied to gallery settings. The underlying principle I espouse here is that Images that are appropiate to more than one gallery should be allowed to be seen in more than one gallery, that is in all galleries for which they would be appropiate 

As for fears of a multplicity of viewings for the same image, who looks in more than one gallery at the same time?

Hmmm...worth thinking about...I see where you're going with this. Will direct the PHP folks to this thread to see if this is do able.....

Sweet, thanks a bunch!

Sounds like a great idea to me.  Something like a radio button selection to pick one or as many as you feel is appropriate.

Well I have it posted in the PHP Forum to look in on this thread so we will see...crossing fingers all round...

I think it should be doable, I have played with php a bit.

The image when is posted I assume is linked to the user. So the image in physically is stored attached to the user. All you would need is an additional field for the listing, or change the xisting listing field to take into account multiple listings.

like this:
name:            author:         listings:
image1.jpg   bloke1         sci-fi, comics, fantasy

Then the php scripting should be able to split the listings and display the output accordingly.

But doing this would throw other information architecture problems. For example on the front page of the galleries you would get multiple links to different galleries for each image. Maybe the idea would be to change the listing to a more "flickr" type of listing with tags instead of listings, but then if you do that you have to completely change the way the listings work, etc, etc.

Not triying to scrap the idea, but I have worked in these types of projects and I can tell you that it would take some work, and more than just the mechanics behind the scenes.

I have to agree with Chimera it's a sound idea and would help give artists more exposure among this community. Alot of time I might have to settle on one choice knowing it would qualify for another as well.  I hope this proposal gets approval.

checkboxes for categories (instead of a dropdown menu) are simple to implement as is the query to get hits.
But it is work nontheless :)
I think I brought up this suggestion too some time ago, because Elfwood actually has that system and it works perfect and is a pleasure to use