Sometimes it has nothing to do with a user's monitor size. I used to make wallpapers for themes.org ... back then, most folks had a 1024x768 resolution at most (usually it was 800x600), so I usually rendered something to 1280x1024, then resized downwards to accommodate that. Over time, everyone's monitors get bigger and higher-rez. Images that I made back in 2001 or so now look positively tiny on a 1600x1200 monitor, and are useless as wallpaper. I usually render items larger than I'd ever need to as a sort of future-proofing. You can always shrink an image without too awful much distortion and breakage, but making a smaller one larger tends to destroy detail, sharpness, and generally makes it look messy. When it comes to scanning negatives in, I always go for the biggest size I can for just that reason... so I don't have to re-scan the very same negative at a higher resolution later on. /P