New feature: larger images

Hot on the heels of last week's announcement, here's another major new member feature: larger images on your entries.

Scroll your mouse over the image above and you'll notice our willing volunteers Sigrid, Max and Elisabeth, are pointing at a super-cool new control panel. Click on the magnifying glass icon and marvel as a massive version of the image appears before your eyes. (Click again to make it disappear.)

This feature is available now to all founding members, but first you'll need to switch it on by going to your journal settings page, checking the box next to 'Larger image' and clicking the 'Save journal settings' button at the bottom of the page. Once you've done that, any new entries you create will include this feature (providing of course you've uploaded a full resolution image).

If you've been uploading full resolution images since last week's announcement, you can go back and switch this on retrospectively - just visit your own entries, roll the mouse over the image to make the control panel appear and click on the 'settings' icon. Check the box, then click the 'Save' button.

Which brings us nicely on to this new control panel thingy... essentially, it completely replaces the 'show options' menu which used to appear at the bottom of the page. Depending on who you are (e.g. a signed-in contributor or a casual viewer) and whose journal your looking at (e.g. your own, a founding member, a regular contributor) the icons will change. It should be pretty self-explanatory, but we'd suggest you have a fiddle around and leave a comment below with any questions. 

You'll also notice that image ratings now appear there too, and that we've replaced the little boxes with little stars to make it a little more clear what they're for. (Nothing else about ratings has changed.)

You can also use the control panel to retrieve your full resolution images. Just click on the 'download original' icon.

As we introduce more features in the coming weeks, more icons will find their home in this control panel, so it's an important step forward for us.

We've been testing this to death over the last couple of weeks and are about as confident as we can be that it's all working OK. However, this page really is the core of Blipfoto, so we're expecting you to find a problem or two. As usual, leave a comment below if you do.

Finally, one for the photogeeks - due to popular demand, we've added another option to your journal settings page so you can turn off image sharpening on the regular and super-sized images, regardless of the size of your original image.

That's it - enjoy!