Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/And thanks to coal, and thanks to coke

SMS Gefion
Voting period ends on 1 Mar 2014  at 05:11:20 (UTC)
 * Reason:You'll probably have noticed there's a number of these. Well, if Parsecboy wants to get all of these articles up to FA, I think they deserve well-restored images, don't all of you? Slightly lower resolution on this one, don't know why - the scanner appears to have left Wikipedia. Book is quite rare, and it's still nearly 8000 pixels wide, so, I think we can deal. Reluctantly spent an hour and a half cropping the border, because the painting had been glued to the border sheet off-centre. ( People tend to think it's just a simple crop. Try that sometime with an image like this where significant image elements go right to the edge, but the edges - while quite straight - aren't laser straight. You will inevitably have to go in at about 400 to 800% zoom and fix up the tiny - but lengthy - bits of the border that you can't help but leave in, by hand. ) Adam Cuerden (talk) 06:21, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Articles in which this image appears:SMS Gefion
 * FP category for this image:Featured pictures/Vehicles/Water
 * Creator:Hugo Graf (1844-1914) [Scan by commons:User:Mr.Nostalgic, restoration by Adam Cuerden.]


 * Support as nominator -- Adam Cuerden (talk) 05:11, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Support of course. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 11:26, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Support — Much more viewable than SMS Kaiserin Augusta. Thanks for removing the ugly tan border. German caption identifies ship as a kleiner Kreuzer, which would be translated "light cruiser." (BTW, I'm getting a little concerned that we may be showing too many late-19th C. German warships — ??) Sca (talk) 16:09, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
 * They'll be spaced out over years, if necessary. Parsecboy is working to get all the articles up to FA, after all, so it's not like it'll be for naught. I want to at least get one per class, and one for all the A-clss/FAs before taking a break. Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:14, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Precisely. Just like the birds. (Or rather, since this is more limited subject material, perhaps even more spaced out... every two or three weeks) — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:31, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we could alternate Asian birds and German ships. Sca (talk) 14:35, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, anyway, I just want to help out a prolific creator of featured articles. However the mainpage gets handled at the end, I don't mind. One possibility might be to group them by class, so SMS Odin and SMS Ägir would get one main page, as they're both Odin-class ships. But mainpage isn't the primary purpose of my FP efforts here; now, that said, it's good for the articles, so I shouldn't want to give it up completely, but I think we can work something out. =) Adam Cuerden (talk) 15:32, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I have just finished overhauling the article that uses this image, which means it will be placed into the queue for an eventual run at A-class/FAC. Great work again on this restoration by Adam. Parsecboy (talk) 16:12, 22 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Support - Excellent work. Miyagawa (talk) 23:44, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Support - I have struggled with how to handle Adam Cuerden's latest batch of restorations because the texture of the sky in this series just bothers me (why does the sky appear to be made of dots?). Ultimately, however, this is likely more an issue of personal taste (which has no bearing here) than one of image/restoration quality, and I can find no objective reason why this one image should fail and the other three should be promoted, so I will be the fifth support on this and get it over the line. Sᴠᴇɴ Mᴀɴɢᴜᴀʀᴅ   Wha?  22:03, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * That's the nature of lithographs, particularly when dealing with areas of subtle colour. Lithographs work by pitting stones (lithoi in Greek) - usually limestone - with acid, creating pits for the ink to fall into. The longer acid is applied, the more and deeper the pits. As paper is absorbent, if the ink is applied, any ink remaining on the surface is removed, then paper is pressed against the stone (with a lot of pressure) the ink is absorbed out of the pits and onto the paper. However, as you'd expect, pitting a stone with acid does not create continual gradiations of colour; it instead creates random distributions of colour that average out to the desired. One stone plate for each colour ink. There's a bit more to it than that, of course - the acid can be applied in a pattern to spread a too-dark colour out, for instance, as sometimes appears to happen with the yellow in these - it's easier than making an additional plate for a more dilute yellow if you don't need much. It's less noticeable in areas of dense colour - where several inks are overlaying each other, and the pits are deep and numerous, it tends to blend together better than in the lighter parts of the image. I hope that answers the question. Adam Cuerden (talk) 22:25, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

--Armbrust The Homunculus 05:11, 1 March 2014 (UTC)