Guidance on clear logos

[Luckspeare]

Sorry, I know I'm Mr. Questions lately.

I'm seeing someone submit many variant and/or fanart clear logos for deletion as "duplicates" and/or "not matching box art" (in most cases, they're not duplicates, having massive or at least substantial differences from others, and in a couple of cases even when they matched some part of publisher-issued art -- for example, the variant logo used on an arcade marquee or on a different box cover published for the same game and platform).

I just wanted to clarify, since I haven't been able to find specific guidance on this (maybe it's obvious, please point it out if I totally missed it) -- but, is this the DB policy?  Is there no room for variant or fanart logos?  Is there a strict requirement that there be only one style of a logo and that it match the box art?

(By variant I mean, say, shading, outlining, texture/color gradation changes beyond mere hue shifts, alternate spacing/arrangement, etc.)

TIA.

Edited September 28, 2021 by Luckspeare
Clarifications

[sundogak]

I typically err always on side of "leave it" unless it is wrongly placed (i.e., not a clear logo at all), junk quality, wrong regional logo (which is fixed by tagging correctly), or a dupe of existing (taking the better of the two).  But just because it doesn't match the box art doesn't mean it isn't valid either for the reasons you gave. I have seen logos used for adverts/flyers that are not the same but it is still made by publisher.  The DB for good and bad is somewhat up to general consensus rather than hard fast rules so somewhat up to the moderator view (s).  But anytime I see something deleted it really needs to have a good reason. I have seen people delete stuff that should have stayed put or if a "tie" (or just their personal opinion) it is easier to keep in DB and allow user to determine if want it or not.  My 2 cents FWIW.  

[Luckspeare]

That was my understanding.  It's a bit of a downer, as I'm watching perfectly good alternate logos (sometimes from spline art, sometimes from ads, sometimes from other boxes/releases, sometimes fanart) being deleted one after another, casually called "dupes" and "doesn't match box art".   But I do realize I'm the new guy here, so I wanted to get a sense of whether this is LB policy or one moderator's opinion.  I'll be submitting these for re-addition where not it's one of those clear situations you lay out.

Edited September 29, 2021 by Luckspeare
"not" added to that last sentence... long day

[seaview59]

This has come up before, I think if there was an option to tag a logo as "alternate" or "fanart" it would solve this problem.

[kurzih]

A kind reminder to anyone uploading clear logos in the database that have empty space around them: please always remove all of the empty space around the logos (in photoshop for example just CTRL + mouse select the logo layer with your mouse and then crop). If there is empty space this will result in:

- the logo looking much smaller than what it should in Launchbox/BigBox (especially BB)
- placing the logo will become quite challenging if you want it on top/bottom/right/left/center if there is empty space in that direction - probably affecting Theme Makers here.

Many times, when taking logos from official sources, like publisher's sites, the logos tend to have empty space around them, most likely because they were meant to be placed in their website on a certain spot etc. or have a so called brand "safety zone" so no other elements comes close to their logos.
 

[Luckspeare]

For GIMP users, just press CTRL-A to select the whole image, and go to Image -> Crop to Content.

If it doesn't have any extra space, it will tell you there was none.

If it tells you there is no content to crop to, and is acting like it's a blank image, it's because some of these high-transparency logos are saved in a way that GIMP doesn't like.  It acts like it's a blank, empty image.  What I do to fix it is open the logo in Krita (a different free image editing app), re-save it, then re-open it in GIMP, and it then works fine.

Edited September 30, 2021 by Luckspeare
Adding info

[Luckspeare]

Another logos question for anyone who wants to pipe up.

Quality is great, right?  How big is too big.

Obviously I'd rather have a 1600x400 logo than a 400x100, but is a 5400x1600 one good when it weighs in at 4.6MB?  Or is there some reasonable middle-ground that's a good balance between size and quality.  I've been downsampling logos to 2000 x whatever.  Is that good, or should I just submit the biggest logos possible?  I did once see a 50000 x something logo...  was 1.1GB memory loaded into GIMP.

[seaview59]

On 9/30/2021 at 1:17 PM, Luckspeare said:

Another logos question for anyone who wants to pipe up.

Quality is great, right?  How big is too big.

Obviously I'd rather have a 1600x400 logo than a 400x100, but is a 5400x1600 one good when it weighs in at 4.6MB?  Or is there some reasonable middle-ground that's a good balance between size and quality.  I've been downsampling logos to 2000 x whatever.  Is that good, or should I just submit the biggest logos possible?  I did once see a 50000 x something logo...  was 1.1GB memory loaded into GIMP.

My personal target for logos is 2400xwhatever. And then I run them through https://tinypng.com/ to reduce file size since I'm using an older version of Photoshop. I've seen some people upload at 3840xwhatever so that they can say they are 4K sized. And to answer the question how big is too big? I've never seen any rules on it, just saw a lot of 3D boxes that were around 8 MB accepted to the database.