With the recent upgrade, ZAPP increased the enlarged image size that monitor jurors see from 700 to 750 pixels. My first response was it was too large for some monitors and some jurors wouldn’t be able to see the entire image. If they wanted to see larger images, 50 pixels more doesn’t make much of a difference. What I had proposed years ago was that ZAPP should link the full 1920’s to the 700’s for monitor jurying. That will give the jurors an image approximately seven times the size to scroll around and really be able to see detail.

A week after writing about the ZAPP preview as juror mode, problems have started to be reported from artists having their vertical (and square) images cut off at the top and bottom. This is an issue if an artist or juror is using a laptop at the most common screen resolution.

vertical image cut off on a 1024x768 screen

Monitor resolution
Formally 1024×768 was the most common laptop screen resolution. In newer widescreen laptops, the most common screen resolution is 1366×768. Up until three years ago, 1024×768 was also the most common monitor resolution.

vertical image cut off on a 1366x768 screen

It seems I was correct. 750 pixel enlarged vertical and square images that the jurors will see are cut off top and bottom if they are using a laptop or monitor with a height of 768 pixels. And I’m taking a wild guess here that the ZAPP programmers knew it before the upgrade, which is why they sized the enlarged images in our profile unevenly based on monitor resolution, which they now claim is a bug and are going to fix. This never would have happened if they had remained with the 700 pixel enlargements, which they should immediately go back to before a show has a monitor jury.

What’s missing
I’ve included both vertical images below. It’s easy to see what’s missing and how the jurors would have penalized both artists not realizing part of their jury images are missing. And actually that’s the issue. How would the juror know if the entire image wasn’t being displayed. For some images it might be obvious but for others, they might think what they’re seeing was created that way.

full image showing the entire piece of jewelry

full image showing the entire etching

The round peg square hole syndrome
What I wrote about two weeks ago with horizontals displaying twice the size as verticals in our profiles based on a script reading monitor resolution was ZAPP’s way of making sure we wouldn’t see the full enlarged size being cut off top and bottom if the viewer had the most common monitor resolution.

ZAPP had the perfect system with our images full size at 1920 pixels square and enlargements in our profiles at 700 pixels square. All the other sizes have created problems for some viewers, whether artists or jurors. Someone at ZAPP makes these decisions and then they spend countless hours trying to get the new sizes to work, which they never will. Almost like spending years trying to fit a round peg in a square hole, something a child knows won’t work after trying it once. How long will it take before ZAPP figures out it’s not possible?

Credits
Thanks to Debra Novak and Marina Terauds for providing the screen captures and allowing me to use their images as examples for this article. I will be sending ZAPP all four images at the original resolution.