Template talk:Should be PNG

PNG vs. JPEG
(the following is a recounting of a discussion between me and Anthony5429, to be found on Anthony's talk page.)

I noticed that you created a template for suggesting that images be replaced with a PNG equivalent, an excellent idea as far as I'm concerned.

However, you have used it to suggest that photographic (or photolike, e.g. images that contain gradients with smooth transitions) images be replaced with PNG equivalents. Such replacement would result in drastically increased filesize with negligible or no gain in quality at all. Compare:

(note that the PNG version is slated for deletion, so it may or may not be around when you get to checking it out.)

The PNG version of this photographic image is four times larger, yet has no improvements in quality (with the exception of being cropped)! This holds true for any image converted from a lossy format (such as JPEG) to a lossless one (as PNG is), and while photographs both created and displayed in lossless formats such as PNG would undoubtedly be devoid of compression artifacts, they would also be way, way too large.

I ask that you please stop tagging photographic images with the ShouldBePNG tag, and use it exclusively for images which contain primarily pixel and line-art, as well as text. --FrostyBytes 22:32, 24 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with most of your comment on my discussion page. However, when I made the template, I was also considering the fact that a PNG file can be edited with no loss of quality and does not require a patent license to use (as GIF does - does JPEG??). Also, PNG has the advantage over JPEG and BMP of optional transparency and PNG is better than BMP because it is compressed (losslessly of course). I will, for now, follow your suggestion about using Template:ShouldBePNG, but would you please post your concerns on the Template talk:ShouldBePNG page so others can discuss them as well? Thanks! --Anthony5429 01:07, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

(end of recounting)
 * I agree with FrostyBytes. Converting JPGs to PNG, or using PNG to store photographic images, is senseless. JPEG is free and does a much better job of compressing such noisy images than does PNG. If we want higher quality images and are willing to make file sizes bigger, then the better choice byte-for-byte would be to upload JPEG images with less compression at higher resolution. It is possible to edit JPG files without loss, also; generally any 8x8 blocks that are undisturbed will be recompressed the same way as long as the same quality settings are used (some programs offer explicitly lossless operations like 8p-aligned cropping). By the way, the GIF patents are expired now, though there's really no good reason to use the format any more. &mdash; brighterorange  (talk) 14:45, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Let me start out by saying I love the PNG format. I think it should be used more often. But for images which have already lost quality by being stored in JPEG, a PNG conversion is not helpful because all it does is increase file size. The damage of lossy compression has been done; a conversion to PNG can't undo that. Only when a new image derived from a non-lossy source becomes available should the JPEG version be replaced with a PNG version. And by the way, I don't think there are any licensing issues we have to worry about with GIF, PNG, or JPEG. ---Remember the dot 19:17, 8 January 2007 (UTC)


 * What about taking line art that was mistakenly saved as JPEG, checking its histogram, posterizing it down to 16 or so unique colors, manually editing out any remaining specks, and then converting it to PNG? I used to do that a lot. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 05:31, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I just created ShouldBeJPEG, but it needs an image
I created ShouldBeJPEG based on this template as I found a recently uploaded GIF that should have been JPEG. However, the resultant template needs a new image. I am a lousy artist and didn't attempt to create the image. Please feel free to add it yourself. Will (Talk - contribs) 06:23, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I'll do it. &mdash; brighterorange  (talk) 15:49, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Meaning of the template
This discussion is continued from User talk:Remember the dot and User talk:Bkell. The controversy is essentially over which images should be tagged with ShouldBePNG versus BadJPEG.

I think it would be nice to have a separate category for images that could be mindlessly converted by the PNG crusade bot, but if others disagree, then it's not a big problem. —Remember the dot (talk) 02:05, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * That's easy: While the rationale for GIFs has been explained below (to allow transparency), the rationale for JPEGs is thus: There are JPEGs of screenshots that are uploaded in high quality (100%), which is most likely uncompressed and effectively lossless and commands a chunk of storage. These images don't qualify for BadJPEG, but are better in PNG because of that format's smaller size.


 * Newbie uploaders don't yet know the difference between lossy and lossless, because JPEG is the only format they know they can make pictures with (as they can with photos). -Mardus (talk) 01:01, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Animated images
Why should the template "ShouldBePNG" not be used for animated images? --88.77.239.7 15:23, 12 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Because PNG doesn't support animation. —Remember the dot (talk) 21:00, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Which consequences has the use of the template "ShouldBePNG" for animated images? --88.76.227.213 10:45, 13 May 2007 (UTC)


 * A revert. In exceptional cases, I could also foresee a user warning if it appears that the person adding the template is attacking the concept of web animation itself. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 05:33, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

PNG vs. GIF
Can someone more clarify explain which reason (with exception of alpha transparency and more colors) it gives to replace a GIF with PNG? Thanks. -- (talk) 19:00, 21 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Cross-linking Village pump to the English Wikipedia en:Template talk:ShouldBePNG. -84user (talk) 16:35, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * There are many reasons not to convert GIF images to PNG images. Please see:
 * Template talk:BadGIF and commons:Template talk:BadGIF --Timeshifter (talk) 08:46, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

And here's another one that hasn't been mentioned before. PNG has no improvement for black-and-white images. Yes, the file size can be somewhat smaller, but all thumbnails will be nearly four times as large due to the wiki's scaling software. The thumbnails will not be any better, as both PNG and GIF only have 256 shades of gray (including black and white). A black and white image should be either GIF (if small enough) or JPEG (if not). — trlkly 14:56, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Template is often inaccurate
The template claims that there is a loss of quality, and that a new image would have to be produced. However, this is very often not the case. The most common use of the template is for GIFs that have backgrounds which need to be transparent.

I think the language likely discourages people from fixing the easiest to fix,and this contributes to our large backlog. — trlkly 21:44, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Excuse me, but you seem to have assumed that "loss of quality" = "JPEG artifacts"; this is a wrong assumption. GIF does not support True color and therefore the image saved as GIF also loses quality. Fleet Command (talk) 09:23, 5 November 2011 (UTC)