Wowpedia:Image guidelines

Wowpedia:Guidelines
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This page is considered a guideline on Wowpedia. It illustrates standards of conduct, which many editors agree with in principle. However, it is not policy. Feel free to update the page as needed, but please use the voting process and put the vote on the discussion page to propose any major changes. See the Guidelines home page for an overview of Wowpedia guidelines. See Category:Guidelines for a list of proposed and accepted guideline articles.

This guideline outlines good practices to use for images uploaded to WoWWiki, and steps that can be taken to make them display better and/or become lighter for download. To upload image files, visit Special:Upload.

Note that datamined pictures of unreleased content or exploited pictures of unfinished areas are not allowed.
Any high-quality in-game screenshots obtained from the live or test clients (without exploiting) are okay.

Image usage and layout

Caption

Images make an article memorable and pretty. They can speak where words fail. At the same time, misplaced or untidy images can detract from an article. When choosing images, keep in mind placement, size, and the appropriateness of the image to the section. Let images flow with the text instead of break it up.

Almost all images (especially screenshots) should use the "thumb" (example:[[Image:CoolImage.png|thumb]]) option which displays large images as thumbnails. Images should generally be right aligned to enhance readability by allowing a smooth flow of text down the left margin - the "thumb" option does this by default. If an infobox is not being used in an article, a right aligned picture in the lead section is encouraged.

For general information on wiki images, see the MetaWiki page on images and other uploaded files.

Galleries

When an article has many images, or can be improved by having more, and having inline images be detract from the readbility of an articles, the use of a <gallery> section is encouraged.

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  Caption

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  Caption

Image sourcing

Upload images to the wiki

• Where possible, always upload images for display to the wiki. That way we don't steal bandwidth from others, and it makes the image links more reliable.
• However, WoWWiki is not an image hosting service. Any images uploaded should be for use on WoWWiki.
• See also: WoWWiki:Bandwidth theft

Link your source

• Please add the source of an image in the summary section when uploading, or later on by visiting the image page and choosing 'edit this page'.
• Fan art images should always be marked as such, especially when used in an article, and they should not take precedence over official artwork.

Model viewer screenshots

While we do not refuse images from model viewers such as WoW Model Viewer, we generally strongly discourage them in favour of in-game screenshots. The only exceptions to this are for very generic images, such as creature type profiles and armor sets - but only if the images are very high quality and follow the rest of the image guidelines. In borderline cases it is generally left to an admin to make the final decision.

• Please note if you do decide to upload images from the model viewers it is best to make the background transparent and ensure the result is antialiased (one method is to take a large image and resize it down). Alternatively, please set the background color (before taking a screenshot) to the default WoWWiki background color, which is [Hue 160, Sat 0, Lum 48], [Red 51, Blue 51, Green 51] or [Hex #333].

• Pictures of unreleased content (i.e. content not shown off or released by Blizzard) are again not allowed.

Icons

Nearly all game icons are already in the Wiki! Don't upload new ones unless you're certain it's not already in here.

• See WoWWiki:WoW Icons for a listing of all icons already in the wiki.
• Use the PNG file format for icons. It allows the corners to be transparent, and doesn't mangle the colorspace like GIF does.
• Name icons according to their in-game name. See WoWWiki:WoW Icons/Icon List.
• Categorize your uploaded icons in one or more sub categories of Category:WoW Icons

Image design and quality

Transparency

Images that require transparency should use the PNG file format. GIFs also handle transparency, but only in an on-off sense; they do not allow smooth shading (anti-aliasing) of edges, which is required to work with our different wiki skins, and they only support 256 colors. See the article on the GIMP for more information on how to do this.

Screenshot layout

Game screenshots are "photo" like in appearance, and rectangular (do not need shading). The JPG file format works well for these as they tend to be fairly sizeable and JPG compression brings them down to manageable sizes.

• Location pictures should...
  • Show no UI
  • Not show the player character
  • Example location

• NPC portraits should...
  • Show the NPC selected
  • Be cropped to the NPC's shape
  • Example NPC

• Item screenshots should...
  • Not contain player's names
  • Be cropped to the item's shape or position
  • Example item

Compression levels

For the majority of images, the maximum size should be 250 kB. If yours is larger, it should be compressed or cropped.

• JPG: Compression levels of 80-85% normally do the job. In no case should you ever have to go above 90%; the minimal increase in image quality does not outweigh the increased file size.
• PNG: Reducing the number of unique colors in the picture will make PNG files much smaller. See the article on the GIMP for how to do it in that image editor.

Resolution

• Crop non-landscape images to show the important areas.
• Do not upload huge images - try to keep to about 1280x960 as a reasonable upper size limit.
• Do not blow up small images to larger sizes without good reason - as this can detract from their overall quality.

Naming

• Name your image so it's relevant for the content it's showing (example: Tinhead.jpeg).
• Do not upload images using WoW's default screenshot name (example: WoWScrnShot 030508 223206.jpeg).

See also

• The GIMP
• PNG
• JPEG
• GIF
• WoWWiki:Manual of Style