Samples View

[Vikki]

I was just curious about viewing preferences when viewing restoration "before and after" examples.
I'm leaning towards a mouseover for "before and after", and considering changing my website to this format.
What is your preference?

[Hankster65]

Personally, I love the mouseover. You can keep your eyes positioned and focused on one area of the screen and quickly flip flop between before and after. Results in a very impressive effect.

[jeaniesa]

Vikki, I haven't voted because for me "it depends." I do like mouseovers, but only in situations where the before/after is the same size, rotation, crop, etc. so that I can keep my eye on one area and see the diffrence (as Hank mentioned.) However, I have seen a lot of mouseovers where the "before" picture is what appears to be the raw scan from a scanner which has not been cropped or straightened (or an image which simply needed to be cropped to meet today's "standard" sizes). This sort of thing drives me crazy since it is very difficult to concentrate on the restoration/retouching work when the mouseover also causes what appears to be a "zoom" of the photo. I want the image to be "static" and only the damage (or colorization) to change during the mouseover. Does that make sense?

Because I think that cropping can improve a photo (sometime dramatically), I like to show the before version without any cropping and the after version with cropping. Hence, I've chosen side-by-side comparisons for my own site out of necessity (based on my "hang-up" mentioned above.)

I didn't vote b/c I'm not sure how to.

Jeanie

[Vikki]

Jeanie, that's an excellent point, and I know exactly what you're talking about.
Darn, I was all set to change things, and now I'll have to rethink that.

[jeaniesa]

Vikki, If you really want mouseovers (they are cool ), you might consider offering something like "click to see side-by-side comparison." That way you have the best of both worlds, though it is a bit more work.

Jeanie

[roger_ele]

My answer is more side by side, but not exactly...

I have done side by side with side by side detail sections, since all the work is in the details, and until someone sees the little stuff I don't think the amount of work is recognized.

I just did a certificate as part of a promotion, it is attached ...

Here is the same image restoration on our web site;

http://www.eleakis.com/Copy/Gallery/.../BalingHay.htm

(I do agree, mouse over looks cool, but if the person has dial up they might click on it and nothing happens if they don't wait ...)

Roger

[jeaniesa]

Good points Roger. I too include some "detail sections" of my restorations. And good point about rollovers and dial-up!

Jeanie

[Vikki]

Roger, that "Yearbook" photo is a great example. Excellent job on that!
These are all good arguments against the mouseover.....
I will most likely keep mine as is.
I really appreciate the participation in this thread, it's just what I was hoping for.
Thanks all.

[Eric Polsinelli]

I have to agree with Roger with "but if the person has dial up they might click on it and nothing happens if they don't wait ..."...

Other things such as popup stoppers may also cause problems with mouseovers, since it's based on java script (most of them anyway), and this 'blockers' may stop it from running java.

[ajcutler]

There have been a lot of good points made so far regarding the benefits and drawbacks of the mouseover approach. The mouseover technique can be pretty dramatic at times. I do like Jeanie's suggestion of providing both side by side and mouseover.

But if only one approach is taken, I still favor side by side because I feel that you can see and study the differences between the before and after better this way.

Alan

[Hankster65]

Good points all. One more small point...I think you have to consider your target audience. Its not made up of folks who routinely enhance and restore photos. Those of us who do, might very well prefer side by side so that we can really study all the small differences and closely analyze the work done. Those who know nothing of Photoshop, etc., might be more readily impressed by the quick flair that the mouseover produces.

[Robt]

I'm not as fast as the fast links so I tend to like to see images side by side.

[jjmead]

I hate rollovers. Especialy with images. Popups are worse

[JustChecking]

Side by side... mouseover's not bad, but i like side by side (provided that both fit to my screen :-S), as i see both pix at once and the comparison can be finer (esp. when the colours or contrast etc. have been changed or something)... maybe also it's that i can squint that well ;-) :-D

[heathrowe]

sidexside for me
much easier for comparing results

heathrowe

[BBBS]

Have been playing around with using flash.

What are peoples thoughts on this

Richard

[Eric Polsinelli]

BBBS, that's very cool!!! I love it.

[dlindo]

before and afters

[Poppi]

Lots of good feedback for sure... I know when I surf around the site and I come upon a photo submitted for help from the "masters"... it is nice to see them side by side so you can readily see the difference. It's inspiring to see the dramatic changes and improvements from the original. This way you don't have to open two separate windows and that also helps folks still using dialup.

[wbcarey]

Side by side
I can study the smaller details of the image better.

[skipc]

What is more effective for your potential clients? The preferences of saavy users is irrelevant. I got a lot of business using this one as a handout. The original was a passport photo that was smuggled out of Cuba in a locket and discovered many years latter, the only picture of grandpa. best..skip

[superfrasky]

http://www.rayfresh.com/retouche/V2

Great before/after view

[Legacy~Art]

I like mouseovers on pictures like air brushing etc, but for pictures that have been reconstructed from a bad photo i like to see them side by side in stages. And i hate pop ups with pictures, i have no time for them and i have a pop up killer, so no point me going to a site with them.

[twinkissed]

I have my main page set up with thumbnails... example minor restoration main portfolio page has thumbnails and if they want to see the photos they click on one and then they are in the large side by side mode (same window), then they can hit next, previous, return to homepage, etc. It sounds more complicated than it is. What I did, is while building my site I let friends and family try out different things and asked what was easier for them. After all of them got back to me, I did the one they all seemed to like the best. I noticed that a lot of my older relatives didn't really get the whole scroll over thing (even though it said to do so) and yes the ones with dial up didn't wait and kept asking me what they were supposed to be looking for. I keep everything in the same browser window. No popups or secondary windows. Get's too confusing for the novice computer users from what I gathered. They go to hit back on the second window and it doesn't do anything... etc. etc.

[peachpuff]

Side by side so I can easily see what was changed and how. With mouseover I have to keep mousing over & off to compare the 2.

[bart_hickman]

For me, the mouse-over (or any ability to alternate between the photos placed in exactly the same position) allows scrutinizing of even minute differences between two pictures. This is useful if I'm trying to learn how to duplicate someone's technique. With side-by-side, it would be difficult to notice subtle cloning or substitutions. In effect, the mouseover animates the photo change and the human eye is very sensitive to motion.

A good illustration are those "what's different?" puzzles--they're presented side-by-side to make it hard to tell the difference. If you overlay them mouse-over style, the challenge of the puzzle disappears completely.

However, for just showing off to, say, family or friends, the side-by-side is desirable because the whole point of retouching is to conceal clever changes like these, not accentuate them (which the mouseover does.)

Bart

[WhidbeyPix]

mouseover relies on your memory, remembering what the photo looked like a moment ago. It's nice sometimes, but I find it much much easier to compare photos side by side. In fact I was using Noiseware (it's like Neat image) and it has that feature where it shows the "before" when you hold the mouse button down, and the "after" when you release it. At first I thought it was neat, but it got old real fast, for some reason my brain was getting confused after a while and it was getting hard to tell the difference.

[WhidbeyPix]

it's funny how people prefer different things. I hope this thread doesn't turn into a war between the Mousoverites and the Sidbysidites.
I'm willing to become interdenominational you know.

[bart_hickman]

I believe both countries (sidebysidany and mouseoveria) allow dual citizenship! :-)

Bart

[Marthig]

Hi Vikky (et all)

WhidbeyPix and Bart: I voted mouse over, but agree with the side by side voters in quite a few points so I guess will consider myself to be "interdenominational"

The target audience is an important factor to be considered though. If you want to show your work to potential clients such as large studio firms, dial up and pc handling skills should not be an issue, in that case a mouseover will be really "catchy".

Regards - Martha