User talk:Quibik/Archive 2

US Generals Watermark Removals
Hi Quibik, I was wondering if you could do removals and crops on       and  for use in their respective articles. No rush as always. Thanks, Connormah (talk) 20:21, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
 * They can be uploaded under PD-USGov too, BTW. Thanks in advance. Connormah (talk) 18:08, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi, Connormah, I cleaned up and uploaded all the images. I apologise for not reacting to your request sooner – I've been on a sort of wikibreak the last few weeks. Here are the images:

I will leave it up to you to add them to any articles. Feel free to improve the image descriptions too. Regards, Quibik (talk) 03:33, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
 * File:Paul D. Adams portrait.jpg
 * File:Andrew Goodpaster portrait.jpg
 * File:John H Michaelis.jpg (an older version overwritten)
 * File:Jack G. Merrell portrait.jpg
 * File:George L. Mabry, Jr. portrait.jpg
 * File:Walter T. Kerwin, Jr. portrait.jpg
 * File:Paul K. Carlton portrait.jpg
 * File:Frederick Blesse portrait.jpg
 * Don't worry about it (time). Thanks for doing these. Best, Connormah (talk) 03:38, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi, could you also do ? Thanks, Connormah (talk) 01:08, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * ✅ File:Bryce Poe II portrait.jpg. By the way, could you perhaps say something in defence of that picture: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Paul K. Carlton portrait.jpg? —Quibik (talk) 11:35, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Also commented on the Carlton portrait. (I don't see any indication to lead me to believe it isn't an official USAF photo...) Connormah (talk) 16:26, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Got it confirmed as an official USAF photo, description has been updated. See File:Paul K. Carlton portrait.jpg. Should be kept. – Connormah (talk) 19:13, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Great. Thanks :) —Quibik (talk) 21:16, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Any chance you can do also? There's a B&W version already here at his page, shouldn't be much of a problem. – Connormah (talk) 01:40, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Yep. File:Jack J. Catton (color).jpg. —Quibik (talk) 02:47, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. – Connormah (talk) 05:46, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Another - User:BcNARApix was kind enough to scan a portrait of John W. Roberts, see File:RobertsKE67589jpg.jpg - any chance you could play with the color levels and clean it up? Thanks. – Connormah (talk) 03:02, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I cleaned it up, but did almost no levels adjustments (nothing seemed like much of an improvement). —Quibik (talk) 16:58, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much...if you don't mind (trying to reduce the list for the fellow who is helping me out at NARA) - could you do (Charles A. Horner)? Same as the Catton one, shouldn't have any problems (a B&W version is already in his article. Thanks. – Connormah (talk) 18:28, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Here you go: File:Chuck Horner (color).jpg. —Quibik (talk) 22:03, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much. – Connormah (talk) 04:25, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Any chance you could do and  as well? Thanks. – Connormah (talk) 02:29, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Here: File:John D. Lavelle portrait.jpg and File:William W. Momyer portrait.jpg. —Quibik (talk) 19:00, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks! One more, if you can, could you remove the signature on this portrait of Noel Gayler and crop ot this portrait of John S. McCain, Jr. and adjust the levels? Thanks again, much appreciated. – Connormah (talk) 00:06, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but can I add Waldemar F. A. Wendt also? Thanks. – Connormah (talk) 00:41, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry for being out of touch for a while. I'm a bit burdened by other things right now, so I'm afraid I cannot complete these requests reasonably soon. Sorry. I suggest you post them on the Graphic Lab instead for the time being. —Quibik (talk) 00:54, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Don't worry about it. I can wait. – Connormah (talk) 20:00, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Any chance you can get to these within the next month? I can forward them to the graphics lab if not. – Connormah (talk) 04:26, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry about the huge delay. Here are the images you requested:


 * File:Noel Gayler portrait.jpg
 * File:John S. McCain, Jr. color portrait.jpg
 * File:Waldemar F. A. Wendt portrait.jpg
 * If there are any other images you would like to have cleaned up, just let me know (you won't have to wait this long, I promise). —Quibik (talk) 21:41, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Nice. I had two more - one of Isaac C. Kidd, Jr. and one of Robert W. Porter, Jr. a while ago, but I didn't want to add onto this load. Here they are: . Thanks in advance again.
 * If I can add 2 more, could you also do and upload it over the existing one at Chesarek's article and ? The colors in this one are miles better. – Connormah (talk) 23:20, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
 * One more thing, if you don't mind - is there any way you can somehow decently crop out these color images   (of Richard H. Ellis, Bennie L. Davis and George L. Butler) and upload them to Commons? Take your time, no rush. – Connormah (talk) 00:18, 10 February 2012 (UTC)


 * So, some images for you:


 * File:Robert W. Porter, Jr. portrait.jpg
 * File:Isaac C. Kidd, Jr. portrait.jpg
 * File:Ferdinand J. Chesarek portrait.jpg
 * File:Richard H. Ellis portrait.jpg (I would say, better images of him exist in Commons:Category:Richard H. Ellis, imho)
 * File:George L. Butler portrait.jpg
 * File:Bennie L. Davis portrait.jpg
 * I skipped Howell M. Estes for now as that watermark is a real piece of work. I suggest placing that one at the GL. —Quibik (talk) 01:42, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Nice nice nice! Thanks! I've obtained a better scan of the color image of Butler and I've emailed the museum with the portraits of the SAC Commanders - hopefully they can provide better scans. Thanks again! I got one more thing (sorry!) - could you possibly clean up these two images I've received in emails? They've got some artifacts from an old scanner: File:GEN Thomas M Ryan Jr.jpg, File:GEN Samuel Jaskilka.jpg File:GEN Joseph J Nazzaro.jpg File:GEN George L Butler.jpg? No rush as always. I'll also take the Estes one to the graphics lab. – Connormah (talk) 02:56, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * One more (I feel bad for asking for this much!), sorry, could you see what you can do about for Williston B. Palmer? Thanks again. – Connormah (talk) 04:12, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * All done. —Quibik (talk) 16:33, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Nice. Here's another noise removal for when you have the time: File:General Wilbur Lyman Creech.jpg Thanks. – Connormah (talk) 14:56, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Watermark help needed
I would be grateful if you had a look in the history of File:Charles de Varigny.jpg, deduced which method was used to add that watermark, and outlined how to deal with it :). Although I had extracted the watermark and removed from the image (I used grain extract for that, which is likely "same" as subtraction), I don't fully understand how it was added. We have many files from this site, www.picturehistory.com; I found by chance nearly perfect images for watermark extraction (not Charles de Varigny), and extracted it, but it does not work well across various images, either with grain extract or divide. Regards. Materialscientist (talk) 12:42, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Images from that site are watermarked using alpha blending. The formula is simple: $$C_o=\alpha C_a+(1-\alpha)C_b$$ ($$C_o$$ being the resulting, $$C_a$$ the top and $$C_b$$ bottom image; α basically represents the opacity of the image on top). I believe this is at least somewhat familiar to you from image editing. In images from the site in question, the bottom image would be the unwatermarked version and the top image just pure black and white. As you can see from the equation, alpha blending can be reversed by knowing the values of $$C_a$$ and α, and solving the provided equation for $$C_b$$. Obviously, the same applies for deducting the alpha channel. You can do the reverse alpha blending in GIMP by using the arithmetic layer blending modes, if you are very determined, but this will be quite annoying and difficult. For that reason I've been wanting to write a script or plugin for GIMP that would do the computation (Gimp's plugin registry does not currently contain anything like this). Unfortunately, Script-fu (a derivative of Scheme) used in GIMP is very, very clumsy for pixel-level manipulations. And writing a plugin would not be a good option (because of security and portability reasons) considering that I would probably make the script/plugin publicly available. Still, I guess I will give it another shot today. Coming back to the topic of picturehistory.com's images... if you are determined enough to make do with the layer blending modes for the time being, then you can deduct the rough version of the α channel used in the watermarks by using the thumbnail version (which requires some gamma correction) as a rough $$C_b$$ and creating the $$C_a$$ image manually. The α channel can then be cleaned up and used for watermark removal. I hope this has been helpful. Best, Quibik (talk) 15:21, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Zoomable jpg extraction
The request is here. Just to explain why I don't use your script - I don't have python installed (maybe it is easy to install on a windows PC, don't know ..). Regards. Materialscientist (talk) 01:07, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

US Marines
I have a family photo which I can contribute. Taken in Managua with president Jose Maria Moncada Tipia and his cusin General Somosa during a US military review 1930  You may send me an email at paloaltofreepress@gmail.com for further discussion and use of other photos not contained within the Nicaraugan archives. His son Omar Moncada Reyes was my childhood friend and best man at my wedding. 99.108.140.136 (talk) 03:38, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Nice job
Nice work with the Petra Kvitova watermarks. -- James26 (talk) 02:12, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

March 2012 Move-to-Commons drive
Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Images and Media at 07:42, 29 February 2012 (UTC).

File:KGB-hookers.jpg
You tricky dog. You know, I poked around on that site trying to find/grab a non-watermarked version of the image and got nothing. Yet you found it ;-) Good work... and I suppose next time I should try a little harder. Plus, you reinforced a point for me... that many watermarked images are watermarked on the fly by the server and if you dig in the right spot... bingo. – JBarta (talk) 16:59, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Watermark Removal
Hi Quibik - could you do watermark removals for  and  (photos of Joseph Unwin and Albert Fee)? Thanks. – Connormah (talk) 20:23, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * They are pretty much done, just one question: do you prefer them with the background kept intact (but still cropped) or made transparent? —Quibik (talk) 21:01, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Doesn't matter. Whatever is easier. Thanks! – Connormah (talk) 18:15, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry - can I add   and  as well? Thanks. – Connormah (talk) 18:34, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Do you have Unwin and Fee done? I can wait a bit for the others. – Connormah (talk) 22:49, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Cleaned them up! Sorry for not getting around to it sooner. See the list of my uploads for the images. Please categorize them, too.
 * There is another thing related to these images that I wanted to share with you. That is, I stumbled upon a nice "workaround" to actually get the unwatermarked originals straight from the alberta.ca server. If you replace the "viewimage.aspx" in the image URL with "getimage.aspx" and save the result to disk as a .jpg image, you will have the same image but without the watermark and with quite a bit less JPEG compression. Example: vs . —Quibik (talk) 21:31, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Nice! I remember the PAA watermarked them originally because they did not want us uploading here...that's a handy shortcut. How did you cut the backgrounds? I usually use the elipse tool but I noticed you have better results with whatever you are using. I have Photoshop CS3 Extended. CMAH (Connormah's Sock) 13:51, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
 * You should get similar results in Photoshop by selecting the background area (including the white border) and then using "refine edge" to smooth, blur (30 px for example) and adjust the contrast until the edge is sharp enough. This preserves the original image border while making it a bit more smooth. —Quibik (talk) 17:41, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I think I have it figured out. Thanks! One more thing, could you clean up File:Norman Bloomfield James.png and remove whatever stain is on it? Thanks. – Connormah (talk) 16:43, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I am on a mini-wikibreak at the moment, sort of, so put it up on the Graphic Lab instead for the time being. Nothing personal and nothing against the request, I am just concentrating on other things right now. —Quibik (talk) 20:52, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
 * No worries. Will do. Thanks! – Connormah (talk) 21:19, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Extracting an image through zoomify
I want to upload this image, but the best I can get is this. If you can extract a higher-resolution version past zoomify, could you please upload it on Commons as, for example, Francis Drake b1696.jpg or Francis Drake (surgeon).jpg? Category:Surgeons from the United Kingdom, license. Thanks a lot if you can - it is good copy of a rare painting. Materialscientist (talk) 13:46, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * This is not a Zoomify image (Zoomify is just one of the many different programs used to create zoomable images) so I can't use dezoomify on it. I'll see if I can extract it some other way though. Quite surprisingly, this website encrypts the zoomable images that are sent to the user, so I will likely need to do some reverse engineering (or if all else fails, take a screenshot...). —Quibik (talk) 14:03, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Admittedly, I said "zoomify" simply aiming at your reverse engineering capabilities, not really the zoomify program. This is not urgent, priority or unique image (there is a copy at NIH, but black and white and of poor quality). Francis Drake (antiquary) was not a famous person - it is just my hobby to add missing images to all kind of scientists. Materialscientist (talk) 14:16, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * So, I got the image: File:Francis Drake b1696.jpg. If you are interested, here is my python script that does the downloading & decrypting, too: . —Quibik (talk) 02:35, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks! As I understand, you have to write a new script for every website that uses such image hiding. How much this is a problem for you (say, how long does it take?). If you want to reuse your past extraction scripts and extracted watermarks, you can post a list of websites, and I'll check them for useful images (I am systematically crawling image libraries in free time; currently the National Inst. of Health library). Materialscientist (talk) 02:44, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Almost so. Quite a few websites use some common zooming software, but the amount of different software packages is pretty big. One of the future goals of dezoomify.py is, in fact, to support a wider array of different zooming programs, not just Zoomify. You can suggest/request them here. Work on dezoomify is not too active right now, though, so I have no idea when that is going to happen. I don't really have any "dezoomifying" scripts to offer except for a single not too interesting Russian website. But what I can offer are various dewatermarking masks/scripts I have collected. For example, you can find many excellent historical images on stock photo websites that are only spoiled by watermarks. But if these watermarks are even slightly transparent, then it is almost guaranteed that they can be removed. One such website is age fotostock (its mask). Another pretty nice site for which I wrote a script recently is Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe but I doubt these images would interest you too much. I have dewatermarking tools for other sites as well, but I will have to dig through my hard drive & upload history to refresh my memory first (it's too late to do that right now). Most of them probably aren't too relevant to your interests, though.
 * Speaking of watermarks, actually, just a week ago I created a python script that uses statistical methods (linear regression) to deduce any watermarks used across multiple images. And it has been surprisingly effective so far, for which my voluminous upload history of the past week is a proof. :) It is especially useful for websites with large collections since they usually have unwatermarked thumbnails lying around (this is not a requirement, though). So, if you see any interesting websites that happen to watermark their images, just let me know and I'll try to create a reverse-watermark mask. I can share the script itself with you, too, of course. —Quibik (talk) 04:09, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

As I mentioned, my favorite recent free-time activity is finding images for articles, and I find most time efficient to start not from WP articles which need images, but reverse - take a good website and see if I can find new or better images. Currently, I mostly upload portraits, with no limitation to the topic. I am gradually expanding to images illustrating some activity (say, an operation by a surgeon, etc). Thus my only limitation is presence of an article on en.wiki, though I sometimes upload images for other wikis, or write a new article to add an image. I have several criteria for prioritizing, and the most essential is how easy I can get a high-quality, unique image which can be used in wikipedia. Usually, sites which hide their images (by zooms/watermarks, etc.) have such images, which is why I asked about your old watermarks/scripts, and I encourage you to post that information in some form somewhere. Just to give an example, months ago I went though picturehistory.com, cherry-picked dozens of photos which I found important, removed watermarks and cleaned up a bit. Removal was often time consuming (I had an approximate watermark and had to clean up the residual, usually from a person's face). I will hardly return to picturehistory.com in the near future, but will surely scan other sites; agefotostock.com looks interesting, these buildings not; I recall finding many interesting images here and having problems with their watermark removal (say, images here, e.g., File:Lewis Albert Sayre3.jpg). Materialscientist (talk) 04:57, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

eight requests archiving
You might want to check your script. You archived a recent set twice 1, 2 and this didn't archive at all. Dontcha hate when that happens?? – JBarta (talk) 23:35, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Ugh. Thanks for pointing that out. Some sort of unexpected and unwanted caching took place. Will take a look at that later. —Quibik (talk) 01:08, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Easyart.com
Do you have experience with easyart.com? We have a number of images directly linked to them, but I got there via an indirect link File:Jean-Antoine Chaptal (1756-1832), comte de Chanteloup.jpg. They seem to use alpha blending, and I can get a lower-resolution, non-watermarked version by clicking on their "Frame your print" at the bottom, but I thought to ask your advice first. Regards. Materialscientist (talk) 04:00, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I have no prior experience with easyart.com, but I extracted the watermark they use. You can download it here. Simply use "Open as Layers" in GIMP to place it on a watermarked image. One caveat though: watermarks on upright images (including the one you linked to) are scaled, so you need to scale the dewatermarking layers accordingly (the scale is image width / 1000). But even then it will not probably work that well, unfortunately. I also observed that if you modify the high-res image's URL like this – vs, you can get the probably best-quality unwatermarked version available.
 * A note about http://archives.med.nyu.edu, which you mentioned in your last message. I haven't extracted the watermark(s) used there so far because they use gamma adjustment instead of alpha blending to watermark their images (not all, though), so I will need to do some additional coding if I want to extract these. I will probably do that at some point, later. Regards, —Quibik (talk) 15:07, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Extraction is good, but they use low resolution, and thus pixelation becomes a problem. There is no hurry at all with med.nyu.edu - it took me a day to make time for de Chanteloup image - too many things to do anyway, but I'll tidy other easyart images shortly. Materialscientist (talk) 11:29, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Sushmita Sen!
Hi, how are you? If you have time you can attend this talk: Talk:Sushmita_Sen --' Tito Dutta '  ✉  22:28, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

64-bit FFT filter for Photoshop
Hi Quibik, I was wondering if you can help me. I recently upgraded my version of Photoshop and before removing the old copy I carefully copied FFT_RGB.8BF and iFFT_RGB.8BF into a new folder on my desktop. Unfortunately I failed to copy libfftwx64_3-3.dll and now I'm struggling to find a copy. It seems that the original link on retouchpro.com (to http://www.mdr.co.nz/Fourier%20Transformation.zip) no longer works. I've done a lot of Googling but can't find a mirror site at all. Note that I'm after the 64-bit version. I don't suppose you have a copy of the DLL? *crosses fingers* Kind regards, nagualdesign (talk) 07:22, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi, Nagualdesign! I unfortunately cannot directly help you with the .dll since I do not use Photoshop. But have you tried the (x64) libfftw3-3.dll (or one of the other 2 .dlls in there), supplied by FFTW here? You most likely will need to rename it to libfftwx64_3-3.dll to have any chance of it working at all. Out of curiosity, I also tried to rebuild the original FFT source code as x64, which worked, but it did not successfully integrate with Photoshop (yet). Quibik (talk) 22:50, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Quibik, I doff my cap to you! :-) That suggestion worked like a charm. Thanks for the quick reply, too. So quick, in fact, that I missed it altogether! Sorry it's taken me so long to respond. Everything works fine now. If I could buy you a pint I would. Consider your back firmly patted. I owe you one. Kind regards, nagualdesign (talk) 17:11, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Extraction help needed
http://www.gahetna.nl is a great Dutch collection of some 140,000+ historic (often unique) photos with a CC-BY license. They offer low resolution (2 types) for download + zoomable high-res image for online view. You can search for, say, Jan Tinbergen to see two types of resolution. Is there a simple way to extract the originals? Materialscientist (talk) 06:20, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
 * There does not seem to exist a simple way to download the originals, especially considering that the images are actually hosted on multiple other sites, such as http://www.spaarnestadphoto.nl/. The zoomable images can still be extracted, of course, so I modified dezoomify.py to create a new script that does that. It is available here, if you are interested. I assumed you are using Windows, but it can be made to work on Linux just as easily, if necessary. It requires Python 3. To use the script, place any gahetna.nl image page URLs (e.g. ) into list.txt and run get_images.bat. Modify the parameters in get_images.bat, like the python executable location or the output directory, if necessary. The script uses the images' titles on gahetna.nl as the output filenames by default. If you would like to set the filenames beforehand, just add the custom filename after the image's URL in list.txt, separated with a tab.
 * The CC-BY license is great, but I seriously doubt it applies to any images downloaded in this manner. —Quibik (talk) 12:11, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The script works with me, thanks a lot. Licenses don't specify resolution, and breaking through the zoomify technology is not considered as stealing, i.e. zoomify is not a protection. You probably know the case of User:Dcoetzee on Commons dezomifying thousands of npg.org.uk images (if not, to save time, you can start reading backwards, from to ), but note the difference between NPG and Anefo - NPG did/does copyright all their content (and WMF and most of the world disagree with their interpretation of copyright :-). Materialscientist (talk) 11:39, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The script apparently doesn't work on a 64bit Windows 7 computer. It has a 64bit Python, but jpegtran is probably 32bit (downloaded via your link above). The script connects and detects the file description, but then hangs. I first tried to use the script with a 32bit Python on 64bit Windows, but the script was also hanging. The same image dezoomifies well on a 32bit PC. Is there an easy fix to this? Thanks again. Materialscientist (talk) 10:06, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Both the script and jpegtran were developed on 64-bit Windows 7 system, so I would assume that this is not the root of the problem. I will look into the issue later today, but meanwhile you could add  flag to the command in get_images.bat, re-run the script and show me the output. You can either paste it here or mail it to me. —Quibik (talk) 12:01, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. To save time, I won't think much about it now. I'll get to that PC in some 12 hours, test the code without -d (again) and with -d and post the result. The script did stumble from time to time before (connection issues I presume, but not at my provider side), but this never happened more than 2-3 times in a row. That said, it is pretty hot down here, and it is always possible that I'm glitching, rather than my PC :-). Materialscientist (talk) 12:13, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

It is and was working, just takes roughly an hour per image (I was canceling the script without seeing the progress yesterday). I saw nothing abnormal in logs, but I attach the header of one log. It was followed by several dozens of similar lines. Materialscientist (talk) 01:27, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Photography workshop#South Sea Islands
If you are not busy could you check Graphics Lab/Photography workshop?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 15:50, 12 December 2012 (UTC)