6k display size support

When I recently achieved my milestone on Flickr (I blogged about it here, as you will remember), at the end of the celebratory telegram from Yahoo (everyone gets one of these, right?) was a request for any ideas I might have to improve the platform. I was a little tipsy from all the champagne and Castle Milk Stout, but I think I might have said something about making photos bigger and better. And then signed it with my nom de plume.

Oops.

Now (well, from next week, at least) the new biggest image size for Flickr Pro users is going to be 6k (I thank you) along the longest edge.

We’re tripling our maximum display size for Flickr Pros up to 6K so you can show your photos off in all their pixel perfect glory. The maximum display size of photos is increasing from 2048px on the longest side to 6144px (6K). Now you’ll be able to show off every single detail perfectly on all the latest monitors and displays.

That’s great and all, but I don’t quite understand, given that I’ve been able to view images (mine and other people’s) with far more than 2048px on any given side anyway. I’m sure that my expert photographist readers (you know who you are) will be able to explain this to me, and I hope that they’ll take the opportunity to do so.

All I can guess is that Flickr are actually referring to their BEST display size, rather than the MAXIMUM display size. Because the MAXIMUM display size is clearly already way beyond that 2048 figure:

Anyway, bigger is always better (except in several or more instances where it’s not), so I’m looking forward to this new change, whatever it means.

P.S. Eyes a lot better today, thanks for asking.