Thank you for the updates.
I'm glad that you've been able to resolve your problem.
Thank you for letting me know.
Here are a few notes which might help to clarify a couple of things.
Okay, the problem seems to be that if I set a fixed gallery width/height, the scale options no longer work (hence the forced scroll bar). If working with a percentage then they do.
If you set a gallery's height to be a fixed pixel value, then the gallery height will always be the specified value and a vertical scrollbar will appear if necessary.
If you set a gallery's height to be a percentage value, then the gallery's actual height will be the specified percentage of the gallery's parent container. If there is no other content on the web page, then the gallery's parent container will be the 'body' tag and setting a gallery's height to be 100% will mean that the gallery's height will always fill (be 100% of) the browser window height.
I am an artist hence reluctance to use large images.
Using larger images or changing imageScaleMode to either 'SCALE' or 'FILL' are the only ways to have your gallery images fill a larger area and minimize the space surrounding them.
Ideally I want it to show image at 1024x768 if browser allows, if not scale down but at larger sizes keep image it at 1024x768 with thumbs directly underneath.
If the browser window is much larger than 1024 x 768 and you want your images to be displayed at no more than 1024 x 768, then there will be empty space somewhere. Setting imageVAlign to 'CENTER' (the default value) to split the empty space equally above and below the image is usually a good visual solution. Unless you set your gallery's width and height to be fixed pixel values (i.e. if you use percentages), you essentially have no control over the aspect ratio or size of your gallery and trying to have a gallery look good in a myriad of different viewport shapes and sizes is never going to be easy. If you know that your target audience is likely to be viewing your gallery on large desktop monitors (or, conversely, on mobile devices), then you can tweak your gallery to perhaps look better in one viewport shape than another but, often, compromises may have to be made so that galleries look 'good' everywhere rather than 'great' in certain aspect ratios but 'poor' in others.
So, I have decided to go with a larger size image 1920x1200 - I will just watermark them (and lower quality a bit).
That sounds like a good solution to me!