All The Tropes:How to Pick A Good Image: Difference between revisions

 

 

* [[Forum:Page Images|There is an entire forum section dedicated to finding good images.]] If you're not sure an image is good, think you've found a better one than what's on an article, or just want to open the door for discussion, stop by and start a thread.

* Page Images is fairly good at picking images. If an image was chosen by Page Images and you think it should be changed, don't just unilaterally replace it; start a new thread. The Page Images crowd usually leaves a [[Help:Formatting|commented-out note]] about this in the page source.

* When you make a thread, be sure to use the ''actual'' location of the trope or work. The wiki won't tag the article if you use a redirect or don't spell it correctly.

 

* The most common picture for a works page is a title screen or box art. It's what most people will see when they look in the store for a copy, and images are fairly easy to come across.

* Official promotional art such as movie posters are common, including cast pictures. This is particularly common when the actual cover is a flat color and a logo or something similarly minimalist.

* Unlike many other types of work, [[Fan Fiction]], [[Web Comic|Web Comics]], and [[Web Original]] have relatively easy-to-access creators. If you want to know what they'd prefer, send them a simple email with links to both the site and the page in question. For instance, this was how the page images for ''[[xkcd]]'' and ''[[Darths and Droids]]'' were chosen.

 

* The most common picture for a works page is a photo (or painting or sketch) of the creator. This is relatively easy to find when the creator is a single person, but even large groups sometimes have promotional images of themselves available somewhere.

 

* Some images simply have bad image quality (compression artifacts, pixelation, and so on). This detracts from what the image is showing, and simple quality upgrades are something you don't even need to ask to replace. For example: [[Giant Enemy Crab]] had [[media:giant-giant-enemy-crab.jpg|this image]] that was replaced with [[media:giantcrabcw_resized_7685.jpg|this image]]. No fanfare, just a quick replacement, and on your way.

* While there are no size limits, sizes more than 350 or 400 pixels wide will crowd out text, especially on smaller screens. Either resize the image before uploading it, or use the image width parameter for the File markup (either with or without the Thumb parameter).

* If you need to resize an image and don't like working with MS paint or other programs, you can use [http://www.picresize.com/ pic resize] to do it.

 

* Pages with quotes should have the image on the right side (you can learn how to do this on [[Help:Formatting]]).

* If the image is rather tall, move it to the right as well.

* If there's more than one good image, feel free to start an [[Image Links Wiki]] for the page.

 

* The wiki aims to be safe for work in its images. Avoid [[Gorn]], nudity, and [[Squick]]. (This means that pages about pornographic works might end up with no images at all.)

 

* Pictures look nicer without "station bugs" (watermark-like logos in the corner, added by a broadcasting TV station or streaming service).

* "Artist scribbles" and signatures are fine.

Speaking of TV Tropes, their version of this page as of the fork included the phrases "If an image has a little copyright stamp (©) on it, we can't use it" and "The same goes for watermarks of ownership". These statements are [[Artistic License: Law|Artistic License Law]] (of the type "'we didn't ''know'' it was copyrighted' is a legal defense"<ref>It isn't.</ref>) that bear no relation to actual copyright law. It is the opinion of All The Tropes that we have the same "fair dealing" and "fair use" rights that other encyclopedic wikis (such as Wikipedia) have to use limited excerpts from copyrighted works for the purpose of review and analysis, as long as we identify that we are using images under fair use. (This "encyclopedic" usage, by the way, is why we come down hard on people who add false information to the wiki - allowing one feeble joke is not worth us needing to delete tens of thousands of images.)

 

* '''Visual Aid''': Unlike Works, page images for trope pages are there to help explain the trope, not provide an example above the example line.

* '''Why are [[Comic Books]], [[Manga]], [[Newspaper Comics]], and [[Web Comic]]s so popular?''': Because the addition of [[Speech Bubble]]s allows the image to include [[Dialogue]] on top of visualizations, something which multimedia works lack. This, combined with a distinct lack of [[Motion Blur]], leans toward a dominance of these images.

** Snark, while not discouraged, is a good second to a meaningful quote.

 

* [[Just a Face and a Caption]]: The visual equivalent of a [[Zero Context Example]]. Most of the time, they only make sense if you're already familiar with the work ''and'' the trope. Read the link for more details about why this is a bad idea.

** "If you read the example, this makes perfect sense" is not a good way to explain the trope. In this case, the example is essentially a long caption.

* "X shows us how it's done", "One of these things is not like the others", and other [[Memetic Mutation|meme-tastic]] captions are worse than nothing. Captions are not mandatory.

 

* Sometimes a trope is too text- or plot-dependent for an image to work, and the better option is to just leave the page imageless than put an image that would confuse the reader even further. Don't fret, it happens.

 

* Most images don't have the title of the work in them -- which is a problem, since people will likely want to know what work an image is from. Fortunately, we have ways of getting around this. The most common method is to simply make the image clickable. See [[Help:Formatting]] for how to do this.

* Multisource works. When an image is a parody of another, such as a gaming web comic or something, the preferred potholing method is the image pointing to the parody source, and the caption pointing to the parodied work. If there's multiple source works, a [[Help:Formatting|footnote]] with a list of the characters named and potholed is preferred. [[Most Common Superpower]] is an example.

* If an image is not potholed or sourced in some way, bring it up in the [[Forum:Page Images|Page Images forum]].

 

* When multiple good images are proposed for a trope with no consensus on which one should be used, polling users in a thread in the [[Forum:Page Images|Page Images forum]] is really the only option.

* The purpose of the poll is to decide between multiple images that are all ''equally illustrative of the trope''. If an image has been determined not to illustrate the trope (or to illustrate the ''wrong'' trope), don't include it as a candidate.