Forum:Character infobox image standards?

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I'm curious as to what standards are in place for the character infobox images. If there aren't any I think that the standards should be something along the lines of what's used in Luke Smith, First Doctor, Fifth Doctor, Sixth Doctor, Ninth Doctor and other pages. A high quality image thats centered and juxtaposed with the character in the center of the shot facing the camera. No harsh lighting and logos either and the picture should be from the waist up or chest up. DoctorForHire 12:41, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

Well, I oppose your philosophy here for a number of reasons.

1. I don't think that it should be a picture where the character is looking into the camera, as at Ninth Doctor. The only time that happens, really, is when it's a publicity shot. Publicity shots are by definition out-of-universe, and these are in-universe pages. The picture of the Ninth Doctor is not the Ninth Doctor. It's Christopher Eccleston dressed as the Ninth Doctor. It's equivalent getting a picture of the "Ninth Doctor" from Doctor Who Confidential. Furthermore, yours would be an impossible "standard" to have, because only the top-line stars and guest stars ever get publicity stills taken of them. There's no way you're ever going to get an "eyes-to-camera" shot of the vast majority of characters. You can hope for a full-frame shot, a close-up, but that's about it. A "standard" must be, by definition, something you can hope to achieve for all.
2. I dislike all the examples you've cited, because they're neither approximately widescreen nor even 4:3 dimensions. It's easy with the top-line actors to get shots that you can crop into any kind of dimensions you want. But the vast majority of characters have to be taken directly from the episode, where the image is most often going to at least roughly conform to a 4:3 standard. Because it's easy to crop a 4:3 frame into an approximately widescreen aspect ratio, the thing that makes sense for true standardization is to, wherever possible, demand a widescreen cropping of pics. If you make the width of the picture longer than the height, this also helps on pages of minor characters to keep the length of the infobox to a reasonable size. I've seen some pages of minor characters where the infobox is so long because of the cropping of the pic, that you actually had to scroll down to see the whole infobox. That's a big "no no" in my books.
3. "Widescreen cropping," you might argue, "allows for extraneous background to frame the person in question, and reduces our ability to see the whole of the character. This can be particularly important, especially with Doctors, where we want to see the whole costume." Both of those statements are true. However, the little bits of background to the right and left of the person's head establish the context of the shot. This can be very important to helping the viewer identify where the character is. One of the reasons I left in so much of the background for Lunar guard, which I'll discuss again below, is that it allows the reader a chance to more easily identify where in the serial this very minor character comes from. If I'd zoomed in to the very tiny character in shot, I don't think you'd be able to identify the character from watching the episode. That's an extreme case, but I tend to like a little background to help establish the setting from which the picture was taken. This is an out-of-universe example, but I could have found a different shot of Ernie Vincze, or even tightened the cropping of that one, but leaving in the surrounding set gives the reader a clear idea of where and when it was taken. As for the length argument, well, the infobox isn't the place for a full body shot, like you've got at Sixth Doctor. I quite appreciate we want a long-shot of that awful costume somewhere in the article — because it's integral to understanding that character — but not in the infobox. The infobox is a place for consision and brevity. (As an aside, I'd argue that the Sixth Doctor article really needs an even longer body shot of Baker in costume, somewhere further down in the article.)
4. From a visual/layout standpoint, the best kind of shot is actually a close-up where the person is looking to the left, as with Taron. This draws the reader's attention to the body of the article. That's just a basic graphic design philosophy. If a picture is on the left of copy, the picture should be right-facing. If it's on the right, it should be left-facing. Honestly, that's something you learn in Design 101. Left-facing, or at least left-looking, images are available for most characters if you're willing to look for them. At the worst, you usually can (and should) "horizontally flip" an image to make it happen, depending on what's in the background.
5. Very minor characters don't even give you the possibility of a close-up. For instance, Cell guard (Frontier in Space) is the very best shot of him in the entire episode. And Lunar guard uses the only shot of the character by himself. Sometimes you can get a decent shot of a character from a two-shot or a three-shot, as with Preba, but not in this case.

Taking all this into account, the best thing I've been able to come up with, having done hundreds of character photos, is something like this:

1. Try to get a widescreen close-up of a character from the body of an episode. Preferably get one where he or she is looking left; if not, accept the best frontal. If that's not possible, "flip" a right-looking picture. If that's not possible because it will make the picture look "unnatural", then take the right-looking close-up as a last resort.
2. If none of that's possible, go for a strong image of the character in a two-shot, where the character is facing the camera in any direction. If that's not possible, try to extract a clear image of the character from within a larger shot that is at least 292 pixels wide. (Why 292? That's the maximum width a picture should be, matching the width of the ads that are on the page to non-logged viewers. Currently, we generally force all our infobox pictures to be 250px, so as to match certain templates used around infoboxes. But once we have settled the issue of redesigning the infoboxes themselves, we'll go to 292px to accommodate the ads. If you grab an image that's at least 292, it will accommodate this new width, without pixellation.).
3. If you really can't do either of the two things above, go for the mid or even long-shot where the character is by himself.
4. Never, ever use publicity stills — except as temporary, pre-broadcast placeholders – because they're out-of-universe, and have no place on an in-universe article page. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 15:24, April 19, 2010 (UTC)