
Just a bit of background as to why screencomp entries are restricted to 1280px wide.
- It gives a level playing field. A 640px shot can look pretty awful when compared to a 3840px version.
- The banners are 1200px wide, so that gives us a bit of leeway for cropping - without having to ask for an original hi-res version.
- For voting purposes, all entries are copied and stored locally on the NZFF server so they remain visible if Photobucket (or whoever) pull a fast one. If I have to resize each one *as well*, then it creates a fair bit of extra work.
- 1280px images are displayed as they are by the forum software, so there should be no need to use the magnifier tool.
Regardless of the width, screenshots can be ruined by awful/lossy compression algorithms - some of which are applied automatically (with no user control) when using some online image hosters, so BEWARE!
A couple of free hosters that don't mess with your images are:Quality/Compression ratio: generally, around 85% - or an image that is around 200k-250k should be OK. There are plenty of freeware resizers out there for those people that don't have the luxury of owning Photoshop (or similar). Again - compare your original with the one uploaded to the image hoster.
Adam.