I’ve decided to increase the size of embedded images by a hair.  We’re talking no more than 20 pixels on the largest dimension.  The reason for this is that it allows me to run natively the medium image sizes from Zooomr.  Right now, I’m using the browser to resize images as it displays them.  The differences are minuscule (showing 480×360 as opposed to 500×375).

However, using inline resizing like this distorts some details in images, especially straight lines that are not perfectly horizontal or vertical.  That becomes terribly apparent when it affects a picture of one of The Kids—especially their whiskers.  This small change tends to cause them to appear broken, like a badly edited picture.

Because I have the site setup to use at least 1000 pixels for its width (or 90% once the screen real estate passes 1000 pixels), and because I added a large enough gutter on either side of the main column to separate it from the left and right sidebars, the tiny overlap caused by an image 500 pixels wide remains difficult to notice.  And there’s no risk of having an image run into the sidebar, a problem I had with the original theme when using larger images.

This change should go unnoticed for most.  I won’t be updating posts already on the site, but all future posts will use these new dimensions for embedded images.