This November's update introduced a new feature called "Photos of Sender/Receiver", and I don't see any interface options to turn it off.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/lync/archive/2013/11/12/november-2013-update-for-the-lync-2013-desktop-client.aspx

Maybe I'm wrong, and there is some way to disable it? It totally bloats the IM window.

No way to disable at this time.  You can either 'live with it' as I've been told or uninstall the patch.  I'm guessing a future release will give us a client option to enable/disable it since some people love it and others hate it.

Thanks,

Richard

Hi,

The feature adds visual context to your IM conversations, particularly in conference scenarios where multiple people may be chatting at the same time. There is no option to disable it. You can try to submit a feedback to Microsoft. It is possible to have such a patch to meet your requirement in the future. Thank you for your understanding. NextHop is the Microsoft Lync Server teams customer response channel. You can give us feedback or propose and article topic by email at NextHop@microsoft.com

I'd like to throw in my hat for a disable option as well. Seems silly to add a new graphical feature with no way to turn it off.

I just installed the November update and are now also facing this "feature".

Please, please, add an option to turn it off. That is really annoying.

I can see your point where that can be handy in group discussions. In my opinion 95% of the conversations are 1:1 and therefore this feature is useless, consumes space and makes it harder to read (more scrolling needed to see older comments)

Thanks

Thorsten

I concur wholeheartedly.

Now every line in my conversation takes up 2 lines. It reduces the text I can see in one time! What a horrible idea. As for group conversations: why do the images have to be this big ! Why can't we use colours? Either case, I don't like it at all...