Airliners.net

I am considering getting back into the hobby but my MacBook Pro has a Retina display. Does anyone have any tips for editing on these higher resolution displays? It seems like most of the photos here are 1024, 1200, 1280, or 1600 pixels wide in most cases.

It's really difficult to judge sharpness at such high PPI count, you can try to zoom at 200% in Photoshop but that will bring other issues as each pixel will be a block of 4 pixels in the screen.

From my experience I think you'd better off getting an external monitor that offers around 90-110PPI.

Don’t bother unless you have another display you can hook up and use for this site.

I got tired of doing that, especially since my eyes only view the internet on Apple retina displays these days. So what’s the point?

Silver1SWA wrote:

So what’s the point?

It is a bit absurd that this site is stuck in the 2000s. With the advent of retina displays and 20+ megapixel sensors, some folks are uploading shots at 1024px wide in 2020? "What's the point" of all that gear?

The site has been allowing up to 1920px wide since mid-2016.

airkas1 wrote:

The site has been allowing up to 1920px wide since mid-2016.

Yeah but you left out the usual disclaimer that points out how it’s very difficult to get photos accepted at that size. You guys practically discourage it every time it’s mentioned.

1024x or 1920x is all the same on my 6” phone screen.

I haven't seen a classic 'better smaller' in a long time and on the forum some of us have been encouraging people to increase size whenever we think the photo can support it. The only time where we really discourage it is when the photo simply lacks the quality. Times and mindsets are changing.

Even though it should go without saying that not every photo supports those sizes, it is mentioned in the Acceptance Guide:

High resolution images show more flaws than low resolution images. We therefore advise everyone to upload images at 1200-1600 pixels wide. Uploading higher resolutions (with a maximum of 1920 pixels wide) should only be done with very high quality images and sufficient editing experience. Keep in mind that not every photo is suitable for uploading in the highest size. If you choose to upload your photo at a larger size, please refrain from commenting about the size in the remarks field. Such comments, if added, will be removed during the screening process.

The issue is not so much the "size" of the photo being uploaded, rather the end user viewing experience. In the era of retina and 4K displays, modern browsers upscale the images such that they appear quite distorted in quality. My point is more that the site viewing experience should be more like Flickr or 500px (which support retina/4K natively) rather than 1998-era Airliners.net.

Technology has moved on, this site and others that compete with it are stuck in the past.

KFTG wrote:

The issue is not so much the "size" of the photo being uploaded, rather the end user viewing experience. In the era of retina and 4K displays, modern browsers upscale the images such that they appear quite distorted in quality. My point is more that the site viewing experience should be more like Flickr or 500px (which support retina/4K natively) rather than 1998-era Airliners.net.

Technology has moved on, this site and others that compete with it are stuck in the past.

It just blows my mind that this site still judges photos based on criteria that an increasing percentage of the internet can’t even discern when viewing.

I embraced the Apple ecosystem. It came to a point where I had an iPhone, MacBook Pro with Retina and an IMac 5K and I was keeping a 2005 monitor just to edit (and briefly screen) for this site. It made no sense because 99.99% of my internet viewing made the criteria I was editing (and judging) irrelevant. Why spend so much effort? Especially when a growing portion of the audience is viewing on screens that can’t tell the difference.