Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I noticed something in one of my galleries. I somehow managed to upload three very similar pictures of the same mini...

The first pic is much better lit, and much smaller. Paintjob 7, coolness 7.5
The second pic is very large, and poorly lit. Paintjob 6.44, coolness 6.33
The third pic is very large, and equally poorly lit. Paintjob 3.4, coolness 4.2

The second and third look quite similar to me, but that is a BIG difference to be due to random chance.

I always knew lighting, proper sizing and decent cropping makes a difference to how people perceive your miniatures, but not how much.

My objective here is not to get good scores on the gallery, but to show people nice things that will make them happier. Clearly, it is not enough to paint a nice mini, you need to show it to them in a nice way, and it is surprising to me how important the presentation is.

I put a lot more though into lighting than I used to anyway, but often work when it is dark. I think I'll always wait until I can get good lighting in future... I always crop and resize these days.

Making the images big might be good to demonstrate the model, but it usually makes it look worse.

When you zoom in on a model photos will show up flaws that you can't see easily in real life. Take a good photo, but then shrink it down so it's only a couple of inches high on your computer screen before you upload it

Most the images in my gallery are there because I wanted to show something specific so I usually don't bother trying to make them look pretty, but I probably should. I'm sure most of the stuff in my gallery would look much nicer if I took the time to take proper photos