I have been thinking about the ZAPP 700 vs 750 sizing issue, especially with monitor jurying. (I am assuming virtually everything to which I apply is monitor juried now). It was discussed at the ZAPP conference last fall; people mentioned their vertical images being cut off, and we were told it would be solved soon. But a lot of the technical aspects I just don’t understand. I can make my sizings and adjustments in Elements, as long as I am following your tutorials. But I will never be a Photoshop whiz.
I never uploaded any images that were resized to the new dimensions that were introduced last year (?) sometime. I kept everything at the original requested dimensions. Almost all my images are vertical, except my booth shot.
I originally cropped everything so the artwork would fill the frame more fully. Now, maybe with the cutting off of tops and bottoms, perhaps that is not the best idea….? I have the original TIF files…would it be helpful for me to re-crop to have more background top and bottom, more of a safety zone around the artwork itself (jewelry), then upload new versions?
But I don’t really understand under what conditions jurors are seeing 700 vs 750 versions.
Thanks for your help.
Replies
Jurors are always seeing 750, but scaled smaller. ZAPP put a band aid on the problem instead of fixing it. There is nothing we can do about is short of only submitting horizontal images. But though horizontal images are not cut off top and bottom like verticals and squares, they are still scaled smaller.
For the second time in the life of ZAPP, they've taken perfectly good image requirements and screwed them up. In August 2009 they did away with the square 1920 format in the words on the web site letting unsuspecting artists upload any size 1400 or larger. Then ZAPP added the black borders (resaving JPEGs) when artists applied to shows if they weren't 1920 square, even adding wider black borders if artists uploaded images smaller than 1920.
Then in August 2012 ZAPP changed the size your images are generated once uploaded from 700 to 750, too large for the most common laptop size of 1024x768 or 1366x768.
Larry Berman
http://BermanGraphics.com
412-401-8100
Wow, you’re fast!
The ZAPP conference was in early Sept of 2012, which must have been right after the change was made, and I heard a lot of grumbling then. I don’t have a laptop, only a desktop monitor, so couldn’t see what people were talking about as applied to my own images.
Do you think the re-cropping to allow more background top and bottom would be helpful? It would be a lot of work, because those original images have had nothing done at all to them…no background color adjustments or anything.
No. recropping will only make your work look smaller. The real question is do the shows know how their jurors are viewing the images. The preview as juror mode scales them smaller.
Your best bet is to prepare them properly and cross your fingers that the jurors aren't using laptops to score at home.
And why aren't you correcting the images you upload for jurying? Every image can be improved with basic "3 C's" editing, contrast, color and cropping.
Larry Berman
http://BermanGraphics.com
412-401-8100
Thanks, Larry. I would guess most of the shows don’t know how their jurors are viewing, or it doesn’t matter to them. They just want it done. Unscientifically speaking, I would think more and more people use laptops in general, not desktop monitors.
I wanted my images to fill the frame, so they really do go very close to the top and bottom. Oddly enough, that’s far more true of the vertical images.
My images are corrected for those basics. It’s only if I had to go back to the original TIFS provided by the photographer that I would have to start all over again. Cropping was the first thing I did. I don’t save many intermediate images (only if I’ve had a problem) because I don’t have enough memory for saving a lot of big files.