Please do not destroy original, authentic box images with photoshop edits, upload them separately

[kurzih]

It's mainly happening in the Commodore Amiga section right now:

Someone is making their own photoshop "clean-up" edits for Box - Front images and replacing authentic scans. In some cases the edits actually do not look better than the original (pixelized, oversharp, loosing texture, color is off etc.), but that's not the main point here since that is objective and most of the photoshop edits are quite all right. The primary thing here is that those originally submitted scans etc. are being destroyed in the process. I've been trying to moderate this saying that it's OK to make your own "cleaning", but it's not OK to destroy the original image in the process. We have Box - Front - Reconstructed that is meant for that. Looking at the moderation situation it looks like the majority would agree.

Thing is, me and I would believe, lots of other people love nostalgia, and I have to admit for myself at least, are perhaps a bit obsessed by that  we love the way our games boxes looked like back in the days and how they would look today. If the authentic box has scratches and imperfections - the better (like antiques, you usually don't clean them so you can keep the sentimental and actual price value etc.) and we can see they look physical and see how the material/texture (cardboard, golden color etc.) reflects the light.  But then some people (probably also obsessed, aren't we all ) are loving to have everything in a certain order and look, with templates, no scratches and have their own liking of how colorful/dark/light all of the covers should look like, pixel perfect, one-size-fits all. I think this is a matter of respecting both sides and using the proper images types so that we can choose which version we would download.

Short message: please, do not destroy authentic images. And if you feel it's a bad quality image, then try to get a brand new authentic image or upload your edited version as a new image using the box - front - reconstructed image tag.

I have reported this to Jason, since the person making those edits doesn't show any sign of understanding this situation. Lets see if the message gets through to that contributor if not from here.


EDIT: Sigh... Looks like the radar isn't working on that person and besides this is not just a request, it's also about breaking the database rules. This is a reminder to moderators as well - there is no reason to accept those reconstructions with the wrong image tag/category used on them, especially since they would overwrite the original, authentic image in the process:

Rule #7:
Front and Back Box Art must have the proper regional tag and be added to the proper category.

• Reconstructed box art can not be used in any other category then the reconstructed section.

Edited April 20, 2021 by kurzih

[MJF]

Kind of wish they would add a reconstructed cart option. A lot of the "fanart" cars, particularly in the Atari 2600/VCS section are legit carts but the labels have been obviously photoshopped.

[JHarbinger]

Thanks for your passion on this.  I completely agree.  Hopefully more people will speak up on this issue.  

[Mr.Laor]

Agree. Please

[kurzih]

Thank you for you kind support on this!

Let's hope we'll finally see an end to this chapter, since we all know it only requires (in this case at least) to upload those edits as new images with the reconstructed tag. That is the database rule, I honestly don't buy any of those excuses/pretexts in the database submit comment field like "minor tweaks" "removed a few marks", "fixed color based on real physical box" etc. Those are rule-breaking, ban-risking actions which could so easily be avoided with respecting the rules and the authentic material which is already present on the database. I find it hard to understand that behavior and how time consuming this is while totally avoidable. 

As I said before and now with more detail: if you feel the image should look better/cleaner either A) scan a higher quality brand new image of an authentic physical box from your (Amiga) collection or B) upload your photoshop-edited version as a reconstructed new image and stop making excuses/reasons that try to justify those actions that are rule-breaking and disrespectful to persons like me and others who appreciate the variety, authenticity and options of what Launchbox lets us choose from.

This actually makes me want to go high quality scanning some of my own Amiga collection (and yes, some of my boxes do have signs of wear, prize stickers etc. and would like to keep it that way). I guess I'll have to dig some out at least and look again what we have on the database if it would be worth the effort.

Edited April 21, 2021 by kurzih

[MJF]

The same guy is trying to get around it now by attempting to add them as second legit scans instead of recons. SMH

[kurzih]

Well, at least that person isn't replacing/destroying the authentic ones anymore then I hope ? But even then, there is a risk that the untouched and edited cover images might be seen as duplicates and we'd have some issues ahead if some moderators are unaware of what happened in the future and might delete one of them. Hidden agenda? I really hope not, because then it would be an egotistical thing to do. I want to believe that this is just a misunderstanding, because there is not really much to debate here, the rules are clear and there is room for both image types to co-exist with the correct image tag. It shouldn't be horrible to choose the right image type that isn't going to be the default image.

The correct image type for reconstructions isn't anywhere hidden or at the bottom of the drop-down menu:



Maybe @Jason Carr might be willing to check, when he has the time, if some time off from the database for that person would make him understand he is still breaking the rules + wasting moderation time. This would have been quickly over with appropriate contribution behavior. Sounds a bit like Jason from time to time has to take the role of a "school principal" - I think he'd prefer to have some other things to do to be honest ?. Let's see if there will be clarity before having to take that role again...

I'll leave this to you guys, time to chill for the weekend (we've actually had some light snow in the morning, so real chilling might take place). Take care!

Edited April 23, 2021 by kurzih

[MJF]

I'm starting to believe that the guy is actually a troll. He's submitting his recons as CARTS NOW. smh

[Scotsman]

2 hours ago, LordEvyl said:

I'm starting to believe that the guy is actually a troll

I don't know if it's the same person, but I definitely think there's a troll about again. these are some of the submissions I've seen over the last couple of days.

Scratch that, just seen his "Cart" submission. Yeah, he's trolling now.  but I don't think he's the only one.

Edited April 24, 2021 by IainSA

[MJF]

Yeah, I've seen a few game deletion request without providing any reason as to why they should be deleted. Even if there is a legit reason, and the person doesn't actually provide said reason/proof I pretty much automatically reject those changes.

Edited April 24, 2021 by LordEvyl
typo

[Thatman84]

Hi,

The issue in question is very valid and it's nice to see some decent attempts at moderation of the quality of the LBDB. Personally the definition of "authentic" seems a little off though. Surly you want scans of covers without any scratches, price stickers or labels 1st? Obviously with the age of the games will enjoy that's gonna be almost none!

 

I hope the moderation and quality control continues to improve because there is some less desirable results right now. I also understand the amount of data involved and people willing to dedicate their spare time to it makes in inevitable that you will really only catch a small amount.

 

One last point I would like to see raised is the respect of community contributers wishes. With anyone able to submit info, the whole DB is littered with artwork created and shared but not intended to be include in LaunchBox's database. In recent times we have seen at least 1 creator remove all of their current reconstructed artwork from the public domain. Directly because it was bulk uploaded to here without any confirmation or contact attempt of the creator. And @Jason Carr was not inclined to remove it when requested to.

 

It is a real loss to people that like high quality artwork, that is very well researched to be the best reconstruction and closest to original you will find anywhere online bar none. We are talking hundreds of hours of work over years not crappy batch filters.

Good luck with the improving the database and I hope it becomes something of higher standards in the future.

 

[kurzih]

1 hour ago, Thatman84 said:

Surly you want scans of covers without any scratches, price stickers or labels 1st? Obviously with the age of the games will enjoy that's gonna be almost none!

 

 

Thanks for you feedback! regarding that point, I have a good example concerning specifically 80's-90's box images:
I'm about to replace my own previous scans with better scanned versions of some Amiga games like The Cycles for this database (the material is printed cardboard, no plastic case + paper sleeve in this one):


I could remove the "Cool Sun Glasses" sticker, I could remove the Amiga sticker on the bottom. But those were original, authentic pieces of the physical box I had bought in the UK a long time ago. If you think of collectors, the value is always higher if everything is intact, manuals, promo stuff (sun glasses!) etc. But having said that I 100% agree with you that if someone has a better source in their collection (with less scratches for example) and does an even higher or equal quality scan, then there is no reason to not replace the lower quality one. And like I've said before, we are all individuals and have different tastes and it's objective how you look at things and what kind of images you prefer. Everyone has their different tastes. You can read again my first post on this regarding reconstructions and authentic/original images. Both can co-exist in this database and both are excellent alternative for Launchbox/BigBox users.

But the issue here, in my case, wasn't a debate about original scans, but about the edits made to those scans (some quite significant changes) with an image editor that were being uploaded in a way that would have destroyed the original, authentic scans instead of simply uploading them as a new image with the Box - Front - Reconstructed tag. A behavior that was disrespectful, misleading (some of those edits actually weren't reconstructive) and breaking the rules of this database.

Edited April 24, 2021 by kurzih

[Thatman84]

Thanks for the reply. 

Totally agree with the original point about images being replaced when you have a perfectly good spot for reconstructions to be added. Shame some people are not always as thorough.

 

Thanks for the reference box image, what you say makes sense.

[MJF]

While I do agree to a certain point on "prize" stickers, the actual bottom labels look cool because they tell you what system a game is for. Without the stickers, they all would just look GENERIC. It would be like removing the branding stuff from Nintendo on their own boxes. Like removing the seal of approval or even the word Nintendo.

 

Sadly this guy isn't the first guy who posted RECONS as legit scans, and he certainly is not going to be the last. The Atari 2600 section seems to be the worst of the bunch too. Especially when it comes to boxes from imagic.

[fraganator]

I just ran across this with the Sega Mega Drive version of Aladdin. The original artwork has had a template with the black grid style slapped on the bottom, and then a clear logo thrown over the top to cover the original. Problem is it's not even very good. The apostrophe is wrong, and there's some terrible clipping going on:

[Freestate]

@kurzih Maintaining non cleaned or corrected images as main ones ends having the main sources as a pile of heavily damaged and sometimes cringeworthy resources. I´m agree to not clasify as legit and main ones heavily changed reconstructions with some failures or missing parts. But for many years, as you can see in the tons of work and contributions, launchbox community is working to provide eye candy art and keeping a good balance between acuracy and quality. I made myself some really acurate reconstructions with only little and near non visible changes to the real ones, and wanting to be fair i uploaded that creations as reconstructions. The point is, i'm not gonna upload HQ cleanings with hours of work to see them overlaped by low resolution images with sunfade, missing parts, tons of dust or damaged areas to acomplish some minor preference for preservation. There's other databases around the net with that policy of NO CLEAN, NO WORK, CREEPYNESS IS THE REAL EXPERIENCE.

Moderation preferences of the community had favored clean art vs unaltered art. Reconstruction tag remains as some place for the less acurate reconstructions or cleanings (that ones with missing parts, heavy cuts, misplaced logos,etc) that could work as a workaround but aren't fair enough to confuse them with the real top notch HQ legit scans.

We are talking about ages ago media, it´s imposible to find scans of everything, and many covers need a heavy work of reconstruction using poor sources from second hand marketplaces like ebay or yahoo japan. 

If somebody prefers this 

over this

I think that person is missing the reason to manage a collection of games with a launcher. Every retrogame launcher promotes HQ and cleaned art, and compared to other communities, launchbox bunch doesn't accept mixing creepy fudges like false european or usa covers for japanese games in their main category. I'm satisfied with the global criteria in moderations and i'm not gonna support giving preference to damaged material. Is possible to have respect for original sources without being obsessed with impossible tasks of ortodox preservation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 15, 2022 by Freestate

[MJF]

On 5/20/2021 at 3:16 AM, Freestate said:

@kurzih Maintaining non cleaned or corrected images as main ones ends having the main sources as a pile of heavily damaged and sometimes cringeworthy resources. I´m agree to not clasify as legit and main ones heavily changed reconstructions with some failures or missing parts. But for many years, as you can see in the tons of work and contributions, launchbox community is working to provide eye candy art and keeping a good balance between acuracy and quality. I made myself some really acurate reconstructions with only little and near non visible changes to the real ones, and wanting to be fair i uploaded that creations as reconstructions. The point is, i'm not gonna upload HQ cleanings with hours of work to see them overlaped by low resolution images with sunfade, missing parts, tons of dust or damaged areas to acomplish some minor preference for preservation. There's other databases around the net with that policy of NO CLEAN, NO WORK, CREEPYNESS IS THE REAL EXPERIENCE.

Moderation preferences of the community had favored clean art vs unaltered art. Reconstruction tag remains as some place for the less acurate reconstructions or cleanings (that ones with missing parts, heavy cuts, misplaced logos,etc) that could work as a workaround but aren't fair enough to confuse them with the real top notch HQ legit scans.

We are talking about ages ago media, it´s imposible to find scans of everything, and many covers need a heavy work of reconstruction using poor sources from second hand marketplaces like ebay or yahoo japan. 

If somebody prefers this 

over this

I think that person is missing the reason to manage a collection of games with a launcher. Every retrogame launcher promotes HQ and cleaned art, and compared to other communitys, launchbox bunch doesn't accept mixing creepy fudges like false european or usa covers for japaneses games in their main category. I'm satisfied with the global criteria in moderations and i'm not gonna support giving preference to damaged material. Is possible to have respect for original sources without being obsessed with impossible tasks of ortodox preservation.

While I do agree with you on stuff such as the Super Nintendo for obvious reasons. Stuff like the C64, Spectrum, Amiga, etc. are different. When someone removes the sticker on the box that indicates what system the game is for, it removes the authenticity of that box. Plus in a lot of cases the boxes for these systems look exactly alike save for the stickers that indicate what platofrm it's for. So replacing a box (and I've seen attempts in the past at this in the moderation key) to replace boxes with authentic system types on the sticker with a generic box with no system type on the label, it just makes everything look generic and cookie cutter, all for the sake of removing a few minor wrinkles . The stickers add to the authenticity, they do not "ruin" the box.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[prot0mega]

On 5/20/2021 at 1:46 PM, Freestate said:

@kurzih Maintaining non cleaned or corrected images as main ones ends having the main sources as a pile of heavily damaged and sometimes cringeworthy resources. I´m agree to not clasify as legit and main ones heavily changed reconstructions with some failures or missing parts. But for many years, as you can see in the tons of work and contributions, launchbox community is working to provide eye candy art and keeping a good balance between acuracy and quality. I made myself some really acurate reconstructions with only little and near non visible changes to the real ones, and wanting to be fair i uploaded that creations as reconstructions. The point is, i'm not gonna upload HQ cleanings with hours of work to see them overlaped by low resolution images with sunfade, missing parts, tons of dust or damaged areas to acomplish some minor preference for preservation. There's other databases around the net with that policy of NO CLEAN, NO WORK, CREEPYNESS IS THE REAL EXPERIENCE.

Moderation preferences of the community had favored clean art vs unaltered art. Reconstruction tag remains as some place for the less acurate reconstructions or cleanings (that ones with missing parts, heavy cuts, misplaced logos,etc) that could work as a workaround but aren't fair enough to confuse them with the real top notch HQ legit scans.

We are talking about ages ago media, it´s imposible to find scans of everything, and many covers need a heavy work of reconstruction using poor sources from second hand marketplaces like ebay or yahoo japan. 

If somebody prefers this 

over this

I think that person is missing the reason to manage a collection of games with a launcher. Every retrogame launcher promotes HQ and cleaned art, and compared to other communitys, launchbox bunch doesn't accept mixing creepy fudges like false european or usa covers for japaneses games in their main category. I'm satisfied with the global criteria in moderations and i'm not gonna support giving preference to damaged material. Is possible to have respect for original sources without being obsessed with impossible tasks of ortodox preservation.

They are not mutually exclusive. The "Reconstructed" tag is there for a reason. And you can set "reconstructed" version as your preferred source by changing media priorities in "Tools->Options" if you like "eyecandy" or whatever. There's no need to get rid of the authentic medias.