Stupid Photo Handling???

[BugDude10]

OK, maybe I'm missing something here, and I'd certainly appreciate it if someone could set me straight if I am, but...

This evening, for the first time, I decided to put some pix on my Zune 80GB to try different background images. So I scoured my collection for some shots I thought might look good, then I manually edited them to make them 480x640 in portrait mode, then I saved them in a special folder to automatically sync to the device.

When I went to view the pictures on the Zune, it would show them to me only in landscape mode, so the images I so carefully cropped to display perfectly in portrait mode were, instead, crammed into landscape mode with acres (all right, inches) of black space on the sides.

So, as a test, I manually edited one of the pix to rotate it 90 degrees to the left, so, I hoped, it would display properly in landscape mode. When I viewed the shot on the Zune, it displayed full-screen portrait-wise, as I anticipated that it would. However, when I set that image as the background, it was rotated 90 degrees to the left.

As I understand it, then, if you want to view your pictures full-screen on the Zune, they must be either landscape shots or portrait shots rotated 90 degrees to the left; however, any image that you might want to use as a background on your device, you must leave as-is without rotation, meaning that when you just want to scan your pix the image will be really cramped on the screen.

So, is it just me, or is this really stupid?

[Jason Dunn]

Hmm. I haven't had that much trouble with this (I got a bit confused trying to follow your steps though). I just make my backgrounds 240 pixels wide, 320 pixels tall, and have the vertical orientation be the right way up (as in, portrait images). That's what I did with our wallpaper section (http://www.zunethoughts.com/wallpaper).

[BugDude10]

So what you're saying, then, is that it's just me... ;)

The crux of my point is that the Zune is trying to do me some kind of favor, which isn't really helpful after all.

The Zune presumes that I want to view all pictures and videos holding the device sidweways. For videos, this works fine -- whether the video is 4:3 or 16:9, the sideways orientation is really the only one that makes any sense. For pictures, though, displaying my portrait-oriented shots sideways wastes a lot of the screen space, so if I want to maximize my use of the screen space when viewing portraint-oriented shots, they must be rotated 90 degrees to the left, so that when the Zune displays them, they fill the screen.

In my opinion, the Zune should simply display each picture with the longest edges along the sides of the screen (when holding the Zune upright), and the shortest edges along the top & bottom of the screen, so every picture uses the whole screen. Does MS really think it's going to be a huge problem for me to turn my Zune back and forth while I'm looking at my pictures? Is that a bigger inconvenience than having a bright color display that's only half-filled with my pictures? :rolleyes:

[BugDude10]

BTW, when I was noodling around on the Interweb looking for Zune wallpapers, I saw something somewhere that suggested that you get a better display of the background if you make them 480x640 rather than 240x320 -- perhaps the Zune is enlarging them somewhat when it makes them the background image? The ones I cropped/resized for myself, I did at 480x640, and they look sharp on the Zune screen.

[Jason Dunn]

The crux of my point is that the Zune is trying to do me some kind of favor, which isn't really helpful after all.

Right - I understand what you're saying, and I agree completely. It's silly that the Zune team things having you turn the Zune on it's side to watch video is OK, but not for photos... :confused: I agree, they're wasting screen space by displaying portrait images in landscape mode.

But when it comes to making backgrounds, just make sure your backgrounds are in portrait orientation and you shouldn't have any problems.

[Jason Dunn]

The ones I cropped/resized for myself, I did at 480x640, and they look sharp on the Zune screen.

Hmm. I'll have to test this out, but 640 x 480 photos looks like crap on the Zune 80 screen - they're STILL using the same fast and ugly nearest neighbour scaling they did on the Zune 30. It drives me NUTS... :mad: