[pkscout]

if a user has high res, 16:9 pictures in extrafanart (maybe on a read only network share) that they use as menu backdrops - is it possible to configure Artist Slideshow to use these pictures and then also use downloaded not-so-high res pictures of variable aspect ratios without saving them to the local image folder (and so avoiding them being used as backdrops)?

I'm afraid not. ArtistSlideshow basically tells the skin to display a given folder of images at a particular time, so all the images to be displayed have to be in the same folder.

Oh and something else I've noticed with last.fm pictures whilst trying to work out what to set the minimum height configuration to. For artists with large amounts of pics (eg Beck) I found a high setting useful to exclude low res pics, but for more obscure artists (eg Mansun) I wanted to specify a lower setting as a high setting tended to leave me with only a few pictures, or sometimes non at all. Would something like being able to independently specify minimum dimensions for artists with less than X pictures from those with greater than X pictures be useful, or maybe downloading pictures in descending order of size?

That would likely require some major overhaul to the settings UI or a text file of some kind to set that, and that's more complication then I want to add to AS. If you want to manage your artwork to that level of detail, I'd recommend downloading all your own art, filter it to your specifications, and then have AS use only local artwork.