One thought I had was this: Is there a reason not to lightbox all images? At least images that could comfortably fit the info bar and the little “expand” icon on mobile without covering up too much of the image. The lightbox has value in two ways beyond just allowing you to see the full-res image:
- It displays the alt text (crucially, something far more likely to be supplied by a poster than title text due to alt text being pre-filled and the syntax for title text being more obscure), and
- The image isn’t omitted when flipping through the images after clicking on a lightbox.
Is there a reason not to lightbox images that can be seen in full?
One option might be to simply (in addition to lightboxing all images in grids) lightbox every image above a certain size on the page – say, above 72×72 pixels or so (I’m thinking in lines here – anything above ~3 lines in size). What do you think?