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)

You wrote not to include publicity stills. This is actually very intresting because I've noticed that people have, for the 5th Series Monsters (examples are Weeping Angel and Dalek) they have used the publicity stills from the Doctor Who website. Should these images be changed then? -Si Iway amway Ichamousacoricothingmabobsay. http://images.wikia.com/tardis/images/e/e4/Si_HTL_Seal_Leader.PNG 21:11, April 22, 2010 (UTC)

Should this standard be actively enforced like the removal of quotes one? DoctorForHire 10:29, April 24, 2010 (UTC)

Yes. It would though, be preferable to have a replacement shot lined up to replace the publicity shot rather than just removing the image. There may be unused images lurking in the Special:UnusedFiles section. Also some caution should be taken (with the classic series images more so) when looking to remove the images, they may even be tagged as promo-shots but sometimes they're screenshots that the BBC has used to make wallpaper. --Tangerineduel 07:24, May 3, 2010 (UTC)

Then can we add this standard to the manual of style? It will help prevent further addition of promotional images. DoctorForHire 08:02, May 4, 2010 (UTC)

I already added it before I added my prior post. See Tardis:Manual of Style#Image use. --Tangerineduel 12:25, May 4, 2010 (UTC)

One thing I want to make sure does not go in is CzechOut suggestion that if you can't get a left facing picture, flip it. This should not happen to any pictures. No person will have features on one side of their face exactly the same as the other, so the image cannot be flipped. That's like flipping a picture of someone with a mole on one side of their face, it would appear on the other side, so would be wrong. --The Thirteenth Doctor 18:14, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

Apparent inconsistency in current policy

Even after these changes, which I applaud, I'm still having a problem with the wording at Tardis:Manual of Style#Image use. It says:

For in-universe articles images of an in-universe style can be used such as; screenshots, comic strip scans or suitably cropped images from novel or audio covers.

Promotional images should not be used for in-universe articles as promotional images (included wallpapers) are often 'posed'.

These two paragraphs are at odds with each other, in my mind. By definition a novel or audio cover is promotional. When you look at most BFA covers, in particular, you can see they've been cut together, heavily processed, and don't, frankly, represent a scene from the episode, necessarily. I mean, how else are you gonna get a picture of the Fifth Doctor nowadays but reaching back into the archives and doing some jiggery-pokery? Taking the image of the Sixth Doctor from, say, The Apocalypse Element cover is like saying the definitive image of Anakin Skywaker can be found on the movie poster of Attack of the Clones.

No, this is a gaping loophole in policy that needs to be closed. If not, then what we're saying is that imagies of Sheridan Smith can be used to illustrate Lucie Miller —and there's absolutely no cause to believe that. Non-visual media such as books and audio are called non-visual for a reason. There are simply some characters whose images are meant to be left to our imagination. I know that there are many cases where I've been reading a book, read a description of a character, then looked at the cover to wonder what particular brand of crack the illustrator was smoking. I don't have any DW references quick to mind at the moment, but I'm sure there are instances where the illustration on a cover doesn't match what the reader believes the person should look like. Well, I guess I do have one. I know I formed an image of Lucie that was completely different to that of Sheridan Smith, because I listened to that first series "live" on Radio 7 and didn't have any sort of covers to "guide" me. C'rizz is another one that can't be properly captured in a picture because of course his skin changes colour constantly.

Anyway, the point is that covers are OOU, promotional pictures. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:18, May 18, 2010 (UTC)

I've actually re-worded it somewhat since you grabbed it (it's still essentially the same, just slightly more specific about what a promo image is).

I'll have to say I can't recall books or audios being called "non-visual".

While the cover art may, on occasion be interpreted as odd, it does allow an image of a something in prose or audio form.

The covers are an image that can be used, we're not saying they're definitive, just that they are an image of the whatever it is they're an image of. If there's a better image out there, use it.

But I think it's preferable to have an image of a Venusian from the cover of Venusian Lullaby, or an image of Chris Cwej from (currently it's from The Room With No Doors but images could also come from Original Sin or Sleepy) The cover of Mad Dogs and Englishmen gives us the only image of the Poodle (race). Clarence with his wings, 26th century Mars [Laputa]], the Charrl, all from novel covers. Then there are things like Vortisaur or Morbius (with a face and body) come from the Big Finish covers.

I think it's much better to have these images from covers than a 'no image available' caption on the articles, these images give us something and I think make the pages better and more interesting within them on it. --Tangerineduel 05:53, May 19, 2010 (UTC)