What do you think about square thumbnails?

davidburleson (ePHOTOzine Staff)

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19 May 2011 - 2:39 PM

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Hi Everyone,

This is a rather simple question, what would you think if we started using square cropped thumbnails on ePHOTOzine? Personally I see it like this:

Advantages:
- more image space
- cleaner presentation

Disadvantage:
- Crop may remove important aspects of the photo

My personal opinion, I like them But what do you think? Here is an example:

Normal Thumbnails:



Square Thumbnails:

lobsterboy (Site Moderator)

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19 May 2011 - 2:43 PM

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This is the same as the option in Foliopic and I hated it there.

I absolutely hate it - what is the point of a thumbnail that dosn't look like the photo?

KevSB

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19 May 2011 - 2:46 PM

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I think its fine personally, it encourages people look beyond the thumbnail

Just Jas

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19 May 2011 - 2:47 PM

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As long as its all square and above board!!!

Metalhead

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19 May 2011 - 2:50 PM

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I do like the look of it, the neatness of it all, but ultimately I think it detracts from the actual photo a little too much. In your example above, the pano shot of the mountain just isn't the same, neither is the headless cyclist!

I think it will remove too much of the photo in many cases, and the aspect ratio is something that stands out on artistic merit i.e. some actual square images work (see Jouco's portfolio for instance) while panoramic scenes will get lost altogether in this square format.

I don't think you want to make the viewer have to guess too much at what they're looking at before they click into an image for the full view - that's the whole point of thumbnails, is it not?

BillyGoatGruff (e2 Member)

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19 May 2011 - 2:59 PM

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Completely stupid idea in my opinion!

Thumbnails are already small and quite often don't attract enough views of the actual image, especially subtle ones where the minute size precludes any real notion of what is contained in the image. Plus the fact that most people on here don't use square format cameras and compose to a different aspect ratio, so you would be arbitrarily cropping an image to suit your square grid layout.
For a photography base website which is, by definition, all about images I think this idea is unbelievable!
Imbecillic,in fact.

Unless, of course, you propose supplying everyone with square format cameras...an 80 mp Hasselblad,say??
Of course you could specify that everyone starts creating and uploading only sqaure images...wouldn't be a problem then...

davidburleson (ePHOTOzine Staff)

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19 May 2011 - 3:06 PM

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Quote: Unless, of course, you propose supplying everyone with square format cameras...an 80 mp Hasselblad,say??

i'll see what i can do

cats_123 (e2 Member)

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19 May 2011 - 3:36 PM

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some standardisation of thumbnails might be advantageous...