Forum:Tech note: Image use policy change

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In my capacity as tech admin, I have unilaterally made a substantive change in the image use policy. Please be aware of the following technical recommendations, as regards pictures:

• Use JPG format for screenshots. Do not use PNG for photographic images.
• Use SVG format for line drawings, logos, icons and the like, but if you can't do that, use PNG
• Do not use GIF or BMP formats at all.

Rationale

• Screenshots should be in the JPG format. This includes photographic screenshots, as would occur when taking a shot of an episode, and scanned imagery from printed publications. The PNG format is much bigger than the JPG format, and we simply don't need that kind of scale to illustrate our articles. Yes, PNG is of a better quality, in many instances, than JPG, but since our pictures are generally only displayed at thumbnail level, we just don't need to waste the space on it, and thereby make our pages load more slowly.
• SVG is the preferred format for icons, line drawings, logos and other files that are fairly simple, but PNG files of this type are also acceptable. We recognise that more graphical manipulation programmes support PNG than SVG, and most line drawings or logos require the transparent backgrounds that PNG and SVG allow.
• There is almost never a reasonable cause to upload anything in the GIF or BMP formats. BMP is an uncompressed format which takes up way, way too much space, and GIFs aren't scalable. Yes, GIFs allow for animation, but animation simply isn't required on any of our pages.

Exceptions

In keeping with our general user page policy, you may of course use any format you want on your own user pages. But you are restricted to uploading no more than three pictures specifically for your user page.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">21:49:32 Mon 04 Apr 2011 

Possible problem with SVG

There's quite a bit of talk on that other wiki about restricting the quality of logo image files to avoid falling afoul of fair use/fair dealing restrictions. We aren't that wiki, but we are hosted in the same legal jurisdiction under similar circumstances. Properly-crafted SVG files generally result in far higher-quality output than comparable raster image files; their quality is theoretically infinite. For this reason I wonder whether using the format for logos and other copyrighted and/or trademarked material is something we should actually be avoiding. Rob T Firefly 03:06, April 6, 2011 (UTC)

Possible use of other types

BMP files are usually only uploaded by people using MSPaint with limited knowledge of how to properly edit the filename. I'd suggest that if anyone uploads BMP or GIF that it should be converted to JPG (screenshot) or PNG/SVG (logo/drawing) and the original deleted. GIF animations are potentially acceptable, however, if we ever need to show a transformation (regeneration?) of some kind for informative purposes. I can't think of anything right now, but I don't think we can unilaterally restrict it out of hand. A size limit, perhaps one substantially lower than what Wikia allows, may be put into effect to keep pages manageable.--75.49.218.60 19:10, April 8, 2011 (UTC)