Commons:Graphics village pump/May 2013

Removing discoloration

Can somebody tell me how to reduce the green discoloration on File:Mirkevet Hamishneh.jpg? I don't want to make it black and white, since the original paper color gives a nice patina to the image. --Jonund (talk) 20:35, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

 Request taken by Kevjonesin.

I'll clean it up for you. For future reference, this sort of request is likely to get a faster response in the Commons:Graphic Lab/Photography workshop's request section.

A return favor, please, Jonund. The file page has an error tag which needs resolved.

{{PD-Art}} template without parameter: please specify why the underlying work is public domain in both the source country and the United States (Usage: {{PD-Art|1=|deathyear=|country=|date=}}, where parameter #1 can be PD-old-auto, PD-old-auto-1923, PD-old-100 or similar)

--Kevjonesin (talk) 11:55, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

• I did a bit of restoration work as well as color levels. If it was important to accurately represent the damaged bits, let me know and I'll upload another version. New file is File:Mirkevet Hamishneh-(digital restoration)-.jpg. Please fix the {{PD-Art}} error on it as well. --Kevjonesin (talk) 13:34, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Advice on SVG, please

Hi all,

i recently uploaded the comic book image files in Category:Concombre masqué, and very recently read the help page on SVG and such. I am wondering whether there would be any advantage in converting any of the said picts to SVG, and if so, which ones. In particular, i'm wondering about File:Zen01.gif which does not show well in the category-wide slideshow. Thanks in advance? --Jerome Potts (talk) 02:41, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

No advantage at all. The file size will be way bigger than the original raster image. However, I do recommend converting your gif image into png format for better resize quality unless the gif is animated. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 04:23, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Jerome Charles Potts -- When GIFs with transparent backgrounds are thumbnailed, the transparent area kind of eats into the edges of the non-transparent area, which results in poor-quality thumbnails. Converting to true vector SVG would be an incredibly laborious and time consuming way of trying to get around this problem (while making SVGs with no vector data, only embedded rasters, would also result in poor thumbnail display). The easier method would be either to convert the transparent GIFs to non-transparent ("GIF87A") or re-upload them in PNG format. Note that GIF thumbnails have generally been better in most respects than PNG thumbnails (except for this transparency problem) until a year or two ago... AnonMoos (talk) 04:52, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

No PNG is now almost always better than GIF here in scaling. GIF is here only for animations. -- Perhelion (talk) 06:30, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

That could be true now, but there was about 7 years when it wasn't true... AnonMoos (talk)

Thank you for your answers. --Jerome Potts (talk) 14:23, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Creating SVG with PNG in mind

Wanting to produce a diagrammatic map I decided to use graphics software for the first time (Inkscape) and took an existing outline SVG map on Commons to modify it generally (File:Race_to_the_North.svg from File:Beeching2.svg). On the PNG renderings I found some text labels were displaced to the right so in Inkscape I moved them further to the left than I would have wished to get some sort of compromise ([1] to [2]). 1. Is it still worth fussing? Is PNG relevant any more except for some quite old browsers who would get an understandable image anyway? 2. Can I somehow have different versions for PNG and SVG? 3. Was it relevant or sensible for me to change font from Times New Roman to Serif? 4. Does anyone know why are some PNG renderings over 24 hours out of date[3] but the 2000px is OK?[4] It doesn't matter at all about the delay but I am simply curious. Thincat (talk) 11:05, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Our SVG renderer handles text very poorly. We strongly suggest converting your text to paths. Doing so increases the file size, and makes the text impossible to edit later, but it produces the most consistent results. Powers (talk) 23:14, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, with the rendering software in its current state, converting text to paths is the safest bet, except in some simple cases with large text sizes... AnonMoos (talk) 04:10, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, both. For my little diagram it probably isn't worth it but ideally I'd upload a version with text labels and only considering SVG. Then I'd create a derived version by converting to paths and upload that as a different file. The first could be used for any future changes and the second would actually be used in the article. I've found doing all this very interesting so I'll probably try doing just that! Thincat (talk) 09:17, 25 May 2013 (UTC)