Hi Tom, My sense is that most published images use perspective, and only fairly expert Chimera users are aware there is also an orthographic option. In deciding what to use for your own system, is is partly "artistic license" and partly what you are trying to illustrate. I used perspective in most of my published images, but not all. Examples where I used orthographic: - looking at a helix bundle end-on, I did not want the near ends to look so much larger than the far ends, and I did not want the bundle to appear splayed when it really wasn't - I had structures side-by-side and thought that it seemed to be a more accurate comparison in the orthographic view. Probably they weren't equidistant from the center of the window, or one was taller or wider than the other, and I didn't want the additional (albeit slight) distortion of perspective The above may sound disparaging of perspective, but it is another cue along with shading and depth-cueing that aids perception of the 3- dimensional scene -- that's why I use it in most cases. I haven't used the Camera settings to magnify the perspective to any extremes (very large field of view would be somewhat like fish-eye), but I have never seen anything about perspective in journal image instructions. Since taste factors into the decision, others may have different opinions! I hope this helps, Elaine ----- Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. UCSF Computer Graphics Lab (Chimera team) and Babbitt Lab Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry University of California, San Francisco http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/meng/index.html On Jul 30, 2009, at 11:07 AM, Tom Duncan wrote:

I have seen some good recent comments on settings for saving publication-quality images, but I wonder if there is a general preference (by users or or journals) for use of perspective versus orthographic projection when generating images for publication.