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Should we have any standards for images?


Cheetos

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I was updating my Steam beta grid custom covers through steamgriddbdotcom and I noticed they have categories and rules for each category. For example the covers I'm using are shaped like vertical box arts and they have to be 600x900 png images. The category is "Alternate". Otherwise you can't upload them. I actually didn't try to load an image with different file type or resolution but should we have some standards for the images in the database? At least for the cover arts that appear in our Launchbox library? What do you think?

Edited by Cheetos
steamgriddb typo
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It is possible this could stunt the database growth too since right now whatever image found is put in there. Not everyone would be privy to using an image editing software to resize pictures. I wonder if we could fetch images from steamgriddb website similar to emumovies. The website doesn't require login to download covers, only to upload.

Edited by Cheetos
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I think the highest possible quality/resolution should be the target, the server should then provide fixed resolution versions if needed; similarly to how Mobygames works. The more pressing issue I believe is some of the absolute dross that people upload with no regard for whether they are duplicates, given the correct regions, or even the correct image type. I've been *trying* to clean up the ScummVM database recently and I've had to flag so many images for deletion it's not even funny. Someone has uploaded boxart as fanart; stretched, upscaled screenshots etc... The worst thing is that even if better artwork is available, sometimes the frontend chooses the lower quality stuff to download/display and it makes the whole thing look crap.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/15/2019 at 12:22 AM, Tomkun said:

stretched, upscaled screenshots etc...

I've been updating the Spectrum section and use PNG files for all the screenshots, pretty much all of which are taken directly from World of Spectrum. The original image size is 256 x 192. Anything that I can't find online, I'll take a screenshot myself and resize it so it's pixel perfect. 

 

I'm at loose end right now and thought I'd have a look at the moderation queue and see someone else adding Spectrum images. Unfortunately I've had to reject a bunch of these as they are in JPG format, which does not work for pixel art, or they're in weird sizes like 259 x 156 so they've been distorted. It's a shame that someone is going to the trouble to make changes but not putting in that little bit of extra effort to make sure it looks as good as it can.

 

Edit - here is a prime example. The top image is a PNG from WoS and the bottom image is a JPG that someone tried to upload to the DB. Half of the bloody screen has been chopped off!Thor.gif.f884c707d839a1953811b487ed99ca83.gif4a417b6d-668c-4ecb-b5c6-db23ce41674e.thumb.jpg.0c5a98856114991bc1f439d3caf94027.jpg

Edited by fatguy666
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1 hour ago, diamondgeezer said:

hi there im afraid i have been adding them screenshots but i am now adding them as pngs now sorry about that

No worries. 

World of Spectrum has gameplay screenshots for everything I think and maybe 90% title screens, the odd one that it says "this game doesn't use a title" I usually just fire it up in Retroarch myself and take a screenshot of the closest thing resembling one. My resolution is set to 4K so they do need resized (and shaders needs turned off before hand) 320x240 as the border is included, then can be trimmed to 256x192.

Not sure if you added the ones for Superman that I declined (would be cool if the DB said who submitted stuff) but they weren't officially from the game so I knocked them back. It seems the (mostly) Russian crackers sometimes add extra, and tbh better looking, title screens to their versions. 

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  • 2 months later...

Totally agree with having standards for images, like 16:9 for Fanart Backgrounds, 2:3 on Fanart Boxfront, and create a new one to games square icon 1:1, the result would be a more modern, clean and standardized UI, i have been done this with all my library for quite some time, and i managed to build a DB with more than 2.000 games from old plataforms like NES to more modern like X360 and PC.

I'll attach some screenshots of my library so you can see, and also a .zip with the actual files so you can see the resolution and that stuff, i want to make this DB available on LaunchBox DB but i don't really know on wich section they fit, if someone it's up to do that job i could send a link to the onedrive repository so one of you could do it, cuz you know.. 2.000 it's a LOT of games.

 

LaunchBox 1_17_2020 2_40_06 AM.jpg

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LaunchBox 1_17_2020 2_43_04 AM.jpg

Samples.zip

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Pixel perfect screenshots of old systems usually suffer from bad aspect ratio, if you don't resize them to 320x240 or 640x480 they won't look how they were intended to look on a 4:3 CRT TV or monitor; the target display for old systems.

Edited by Suhrvivor
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  • 3 months later...

I'd like to start contributing screenshots to games but would like to see some standards in place before I do. All too often when populating my games at the moment from the db I'm finding gameplay shots of different aspect ratios that detracts from the clean look when they are all aspect correct.

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