Community weekly poll: Square Pixels are Important

Square Pixels are Important

My favorite resolution is 1024x768 for a 17" CRT or a 15" or 17" LCD.
1600x1200 is great for really big monitors of 21" or greater.

The resolution 1280x1024 is evil.
The reason I say this because the pixels are not square. More on this below.

When viewing graphics at 1280x1024 all images will appear to be stretched slightly wider (but not taller) than they should. this includes both artwork, and photos.

This is why:

On resolutions 640x480, 1024x768, and 1600x1200, the display aspect ratio is 4:3 or 1.3333:1. Since the physical screen width is 1.333 of the screen height, the pixels are square (pixel aspect ratio of 1:1).

PDAs also support resolutions with square pixels: 160x160, 320x320, 240x320, and 480x640.

The only widely used resolution with this problem is 1280x1024.

With 1280x1024 the Display aspect ratio (DAR) is 5:4 or 1.25:1. with the physical screen being 4:3 or 1.3333:1.

This results in each pixel being slightly wider than tall.

Why does this matter?

Because any artwork or photos viewed in 1280x1024 are not appearing as the artist (or photographer) intended.

Likewise,
If an artist works in this resolution, all of their work will look different than they intended in any resolution other than 1280x1024.

Bottom Line is that 1280x1024 is fine for most people if you don't mind all images being stretched a bit.

It should definitely be taboo for ALL artists.

For those interested, here's an article about aspect ratios for the movie industry that complicates things a bit.
http://www.mir.com/DMG/aspect.html

Radical