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Hello,
while surfing Brickshelf recent galleries another “highlight” could be found:
An broken, 3504x2336 picture!
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=2006136
No, your computer isn’t broken, the picture someone uploaded was allready broken
before uploading or brickshelf broke it ...
The Thumbnail shows the broken pic as well:
Please, LEGO fans, use your brain before uploading stuff online!
Holger
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In lugnet.general, Holger Matthes wrote:
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while surfing Brickshelf recent galleries another “highlight” could be found:
An broken, 3504x2336 picture!
No, your computer isn’t broken, the picture someone uploaded was allready
broken before uploading or brickshelf broke it ...
The Thumbnail shows the broken pic as well:
Please, LEGO fans, use your brain before uploading stuff online!
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Hi Holger,
Your request may not be heard. Most of the people uploading such junk, whether
it’s out of focus, poorly lit, too low or too high resolution pictures are
mostly kids who don’t read Lugnet...it might be better if you posted this on BZ
Power or wherever they congregate.
I really liked your overview on how to present good Lego pictures. It doesn’t
take any high priced equipment to do a good job when you take some care and take
your pictures outside, on a tripod, and rescale them, just as you say.
But the problem is, you’re telling the people (Lugnet, 1000steine) who probably
aren’t the people causing your grief. Those people don’t read Lugnet.general,
and they probably don’t care anyways.
Also note that poor Kevin is still moderating all the folders himself. It’s
really tough for him manually check every photo, so short of illegal content, he
can’t be that critical (or may not want to be).
Calum
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Hi Holger,
Your request may not be heard. Most of the people uploading such junk,
whether it’s out of focus, poorly lit, too low or too high resolution
pictures are mostly kids who don’t read Lugnet...it might be better if you
posted this on BZ Power or wherever they congregate.
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Hi Calum,
yes, I know. Most of the users which really should read this are not acitve on
lugnet or 1000steine.
But I do not have the time to go to all other forums to do my missionary work.
Jojo did a good job while linking my gallery here at lugnet and I am surprised
how many feedback and discussion has started.
So hopefully people reading lugnet and other forums might transport this
discussion through the whole online LEGO world?
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I really liked your overview on how to present good Lego pictures. It
doesn’t take any high priced equipment to do a good job when you take some
care and take your pictures outside, on a tripod, and rescale them, just as
you say.
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Thanks, I am no photographer but I love to share my experiences.
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But the problem is, you’re telling the people (Lugnet, 1000steine) who
probably aren’t the people causing your grief. Those people don’t read
Lugnet.general, and they probably don’t care anyways.
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Some of them are active at lugnet or 1000steine. My example was caused not by a
Bionicle kid with it’s phone cam.
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Also note that poor Kevin is still moderating all the folders himself. It’s
really tough for him manually check every photo, so short of illegal content,
he can’t be that critical (or may not want to be).
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Yes I know. But there are some ideas to make the whole issues smoother:
- The brickshelf server uses a kind of resizing batch for the thumbnails. So why couldn’t the filezise and pics ize not be reduced automatically while uploading new pics? Limitations would keep the server space and traffic lower.
- Or a routine testing the size of the pics with a simple result: The picture can not be uploaded due to the file size. (Ok that won’t stop blurry, dark pics)
- Could there be a voting for other brickshelf-user? If a gallery gets 50 or whatever negative results it will be deleted. So if someone finds a majority of blurry, bad pics so just kick out the gallery.
- Kevin could update the upload site with some more warnings, e.g. my protest pic or a link to some basics about editing pictures before uploading them.
Holger
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In lugnet.general, Calum Tsang wrote:
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In lugnet.general, Holger Matthes wrote:
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Please, LEGO fans, use your brain before uploading stuff online!
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Your request may not be heard. Most of the people uploading such junk,
whether it’s out of focus, poorly lit, too low or too high resolution
pictures are mostly kids who don’t read Lugnet...it might be better if you
posted this on BZ Power or wherever they congregate.
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I notice a number of sample “bad” images are Bionicle-related, not surprising
given the number of BZPower members using Brickshelf. This is an ongoing
education issue for BZP, and one that we are constantly trying to educate the
younger Brickshelf users about. There are several photography and posting
tutorials at BZP, but they’re not always used. There’s a fair amount of churn at
BZP, so education will always be an ongoing process.
This will likely continue to be an issue for AFOLs looking for more polished
Brickshelf content. I don’t see the number of poorly-lit, fuzzy, oversized BMPs
decreasing anytime soon.
Having said that, would anyone (perhaps Holger) be interested in creating a
tutorial for publication on LEGOFan? There are some great tips in this thread.
Kelly
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Holger "HoMa" Matthes wrote:
> - Could there be a voting for other brickshelf-user? If a gallery
> gets 50 or whatever negative results it will be deleted. So if
> someone finds a majority of blurry, bad pics so just kick out the
> gallery.
This would be a horrible idea. It would be so abuseable to delete pictures
from people that for some reason are disliked, or content that someone
objects to. Can you imagine how quickly Brendan Powell Smith's Bible
pictures would be voted off...
On the subject of overly large pictures - I would love to see pictures over
some size re-sampled to say 800x600, though the original should also be
available (sometimes it's nice to be able to zoom in). But if the default
was to display maximum 1024x768 or some such, with larger pictures
re-sampled down, that would be way cool...
As to uploading blurry pictures and such - I have to admit, I used to spend
time going through all my pictures, re-sizing them to 800x600 or smaller or
so (sometimes by scaling, some times by cropping). These days, I just don't
have the time, so they get uploaded as is (though at least I get them all
rotated right - primarily because the MS Windows picture browser
automatically saves rotated pictures if you rotate while browsing, so it's
just a matter of a minute or two. Sometimes I will also kill a horrible
picture, however, I generally prefer to keep all the pictures taken, and
since I'm not making a new set of pictures before uploading, there's a catch
(I suppose I could avoid including bad pictures in the zip before
uploading).
Frank
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In lugnet.general, Calum Tsang wrote:
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Your request may not be heard. Most of the people uploading such junk,
whether it’s out of focus, poorly lit, too low or too high resolution
pictures are mostly kids who don’t read Lugnet...it might be better if you
posted this on BZ Power or wherever they congregate.
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I have now idea if it’s practicly feasable, but maybe have a text file
automaticly uploaded in every new brickshelf acount, containing basic
reccomondations plus a link to more extensive information, would be another
chanel to educate at least a substantial part of the new users.
With friendly greetings, M. Moolhuysen.
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In lugnet.general, Kelly McKiernan wrote:
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Having said that, would anyone (perhaps Holger) be interested in creating a
tutorial for publication on LEGOFan? There are some great tips in this
thread.
Kelly
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I would’ve thought the most logical place to put an article about how best to
upload pictures to Brickshelf, would be on the front page of Brickshelf itself.
May I suggest to Holger that he emails a cut down version of the post at the top
of this branch to Kevin. If most of the work is done for him, I’m sure he’d be
happy to add it. Failing that, as historically, Kevin hasn’t been very keen to
answer emails, you could try posting it to the zerostuds forum. Kevin’s sure to
see it there
Allister
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In lugnet.general, Allister McLaren wrote:
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In lugnet.general, Kelly McKiernan wrote:
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Having said that, would anyone (perhaps Holger) be interested in creating a
tutorial for publication on LEGOFan? There are some great tips in this
thread.
Kelly
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I would’ve thought the most logical place to put an article about how best to
upload pictures to Brickshelf, would be on the front page of Brickshelf
itself.
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Agreed. However, I would think if it would ever be there, it would have already
been put up. In my conversations with Kevin from a couple of BrickFests ago, he
indicated a desire to keep text to a minimum and allow the content to be the
main focus. I gather that’s for internationalization. And I would also think
that putting any large amount of “how to take and post decent pictures” might
also scare some people off; they might get the impression that good photography
or image manipulation/resizing on their part is mandatory.
Kelly
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In lugnet.general, Holger Matthes wrote:
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I do not say that there are only BZPower “kids” uploading problematic pics at
brickshelf. I know a huge number of AFOL galleries (ok, the content seems to
be build by an AFOL) which could be improved.
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No, that was my fault. I implied that. Sorry Holger.
Calum
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In lugnet.general, Frank Filz wrote:
> This would be a horrible idea. It would be so abuseable to delete pictures
> from people that for some reason are disliked, or content that someone
> objects to. Can you imagine how quickly Brendan Powell Smith's Bible
> pictures would be voted off...
I agree. But there could be a voting without consequences, like at mocpages. One
category could be "artwork and presentation". So blurry pics could cause a
"negative" vote.
> On the subject of overly large pictures - I would love to see pictures over
> some size re-sampled to say 800x600, though the original should also be
> available (sometimes it's nice to be able to zoom in). But if the default
> was to display maximum 1024x768 or some such, with larger pictures
> re-sampled down, that would be way cool...
If the photographer takes both overview and detailed pics there is no need to
zoom in. A automatic resize functionality down to 800x600 would be perfect.
> ... These days, I just don't
> have the time, so they get uploaded as is ...
I do not understand this way of thinking. If you do not have the time to sort
out your pics or run them through a resize-batch process before uploading, I
will not have time to surf and enjoy such a gallery. If the creator spends so
little interest in presenting his/her stuff, why should the spectator spend even
more time looking at the pics?
Holger
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If brickshelf were to completely ban BMP files, that would be a good start...
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In lugnet.general, Jonathan Wilson wrote:
> If brickshelf were to completely ban BMP files, that would be a good start...
Or auto-convert them to JPG when they are uploaded. But that takes lotsa CPU
cycles.
Steve
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In lugnet.general, Holger Matthes wrote:
> In lugnet.general, Frank Filz wrote:
[...]
> I do not understand this way of thinking. If you do not have the time to sort
> out your pics or run them through a resize-batch process before uploading, I
> will not have time to surf and enjoy such a gallery. If the creator spends so
> little interest in presenting his/her stuff, why should the spectator spend even
> more time looking at the pics?
Hi Holger,
Don't forget that some users use BS as a storing facility for their own needs or
just to exchange stuffs with friends...and not for the pleasure of the
"spectator" you are.
But this thread is a great one and I agree most of the points even though I
don't care too much (the thumbs prevent me from clicking Bionicles things).
(I care with regard to save server HD capacity and cost for the hoster)
Didier
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Didier Enjary wrote:
> In lugnet.general, Holger Matthes wrote:
> > I do not understand this way of thinking. If you do not have the
> > time to sort out your pics or run them through a resize-batch
> > process before uploading, I will not have time to surf and enjoy
> > such a gallery. If the creator spends so little interest in
> > presenting his/her stuff, why should the spectator spend even more
> > time looking at the pics?
>
> Don't forget that some users use BS as a storing facility for their
> own needs or just to exchange stuffs with friends...and not for the
> pleasure of the "spectator" you are.
Yep. That's part of it. I'm pushing those pictures out in part to have an
additional backup (I'm horrible at writing CDs for backup, but if I have a
copy of my pictures on BrickShelf, on my work laptop, and on my home
computer, I've got a lot of safety [though things are compromised a bit if I
take the laptop home]).
But there's also somewhat of a difference between someone like me, who does
make an effort to take good pictures, and folks who upload a whole gallery
of out of focus pictures, or one's that are not well lit, or ones that could
be reduced to a reasonable size simply by cropping.
As to zooming in on large pictures - that assumes the photographer knows the
details I want to see. Also, by zooming in from a larger picture, you get
more context of the detail. I think there's room for both (which is why what
I'd love to see is auto-resizing of large pictures to a reasonable size,
with the high-res picture still available for those who desire to see it).
We also need to distinguish between casual photography and serious
photography. For casual photographers, I would concentrate on a few issues:
- lighting (and proper lighting would solve most of the blurriness issues)
- framing (so you don't need to crop as much)
- use of macro mode if available (my camera doesn't have a good macro
capability*)
- a few quick techniques before uploading (rotate your pictures so up is up,
prune out the pictures that are hopeless, crop a few).
* eventually I'll buy a new one, though then I'll be presented with the
re-sizing issue. My 1.3 mega-pixel camera produces reasonable size images
for today's internet (most people have high speed connections and large
screens - though still, I think 800x600 is the most that is normally needed
for internet use, very few folks have more than a 1280x1024 display, looking
at an 800x600 picture in a browser will almost fill a 1024x768 screen, and
leaves room for a few other windows to be visible on 1280x1024).
Frank
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Jonathan Wilson wrote:
> If brickshelf were to completely ban BMP files, that would be a good
> start...
NO!
Imagine people putting up sticker scans, which you'd want as sharp as
possible for reprinting. Using JPEG and having them scaled would kill the
details there.
Why not educate the clueless user instead of killing features power users
might want or need?
--
Jan-Albert van Ree | http://www.vanree.net/brickpiles/
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Jan-Albert van Ree wrote:
> Jonathan Wilson wrote:
>
> > If brickshelf were to completely ban BMP files, that would be a good
> > start...
>
> NO!
>
> Imagine people putting up sticker scans, which you'd want as sharp as
> possible for reprinting. Using JPEG and having them scaled would kill the
> details there.
I never said anything about scaling the image.
For things like sticker scans or anything else where you don't want lossy
compression, there are image formats like PNG. PNG can be used just fine
for anything where you don't want to loose quality.
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