Despite what we artists see in our profiles when enlarging the images, the jurors see it differently. And actually the jurors see it almost exactly like they’ve seen it before except for one difference. That being the enlarged size of the images are now 750 long dimension instead of 700 long dimension. They see our images in pop up windows that are black and can enlarge to fill the screen keeping the image size of 750 pixels long dimension the same. Just the black enlarges.

Preview as Juror button

There is a new button when we preview our applications “Preview as Juror.” it lets us see the images exactly as the jurors see them for monitor jurying. And it’s retroactive to any of the applications we’ve prepared in the past including archived applications.

When you’re in the Preview as Juror mode, the images appear 750 pixels long dimension on black. If you move your cursor to the right of the image, an arrow pointing to the right appears. Clicking on the arrow takes you to the next image. Moving your cursor to the left of an image brings up an arrow facing left. Clicking on it takes you to the previous image.

Jury Slideshow

Moving your cursor to the middle of the image brings up the letter I, for information. Clicking on it brings up the image description in a semi transparent overlay of the bottom of the image. You can easily see all that I’m describing if you log into your profile and check any application for the Preview as Juror button.

scoring screen

I’ve been told that the scoring page looks like this.

Now about those black borders that ZAPP keeps telling us aren’t necessary anymore. I still recommend uploaded images that are 1920 pixels square with black borders masking rectangular images. If you apply to shows that project the images with non square images, ZAPP will “project them on black.” “Project them on black” is really ZAPP-speak that ZAPP will add black borders and resave your JPEGS which may reduce quality in images that have a lot of detail. For shows that do monitor jurying, the jurors see (have always seen) the images on black so it’s not an issue either way.

My recommendation is to go with the black borders. It gives you more control over what the jurors see and there’s no chance of degraded images being projected.

Now about that inconsistent size of the enlargements in our profiles. that’s only how we see the images, not how the jurors see the images. And it’s actually a bug I discovered which ZAPP will be fixing in the future.