Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Cone-flower.png

Cone-flower.png
My first attempt at picture features, so I'm not at all sure that I'm crossing the t's and dotting the i's, but the Echinacea article had only one photo (in its taxobox). That photo was of cone flowers growing wild in the Rocky Mountains, and therefore it is the best for that position, but I had a nice photo of the flowers grown as ornamentals in 2000, so I did a 300 dpi scan of the photo. It's part of Echinacea, and the photo was taken and uploaded by Geogre 03:04, 7 August 2005 (UTC). 1/3 -- Jtkiefer  T - 00:45, August 22, 2005 (UTC) 
 * Nominate and support. - Geogre 03:04, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Looks like it been through a very lossy save. The dithering suggests that it was saved as an 8-bit PNG. &mdash; David Remahl 11:06, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeh I agree - image quality is a problem. Enochlau 12:19, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I also have a problem with the quality. David D. (Talk) 13:08, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Ok: I keep it in Photoshop on my desktop, so I'll to a low-lossy format.  24-bit .png coming up in a moment.  Look again in an hour or so. Geogre 16:40, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Note: From this point on, the image is a much higher fidelity file save.  I use dial-up, so uploading the 1.5 MB files always gets me down.  However, other than going with .TIFF, this is about the least loss we're going to get on an open-source format.  Geogre 16:55, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure of the prefered formats in wikipedia? I would have thought the maximum information possible?  TIFF is obviously over the top but a jpg compression can be pretty small.  Does wikipedia prefer us to use color palettes, say 256 colours only etc?  This is good for web sites but I do not see the advantage for wikipedia. David D. (Talk) 17:00, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I do not think TIFF is over the top, however it is not recommended at this point. Commons says it may be in the near future. TIFF's can be saved to PNG's losslessly in most cases. For photographs that are included in articles, JPEGs are preferred. I recommend that both a PNG and a JPEG are uploaded, and that all colorspace information (ColorSync profiles e.g.) is maintained. Wikipedia must be careful to retain as much informaton as possible, so that images can be edited and used by future editors, when we are gone. A 3000x2000 picture may be overkill for today's displays, but may be considered small in a couple of years, or not fit for printing. &mdash; 22:35, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
 * It is a beautiful picture; I'll put it on my desktop. However, the details of the flower itself are a bit blurry... Maybe sharpening a tad, if you haven't already done so. There are also some white specks and traces from the original photo. They can very easily be retouched in Photoshop. I'd be glad to help you if you want. Maybe I'd also crop a few pixels of the green/black from the top to make it more centered. &mdash; David Remahl 22:38, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, the composition is something I disagree with you on. The shot is balanced the way that, I at least, wished to balance it (although the scan is PD, so folks can do as they like).  The difficulty with sharpening is that I can use an unsharp mask and selectively sharpen, but the blur that you're seeing is the effect of a telephoto.  I.e. the focus is somewhat intended to be narrow.  On the othe rhand, the specks...yeah, they drive me crazy.  Since my first thought was to save this in a more lossy format to enable it to be displayed a about 800 x 1200 px, I didn't climb down to the really tight views.  Then I did the high high-res save and didn't think of how much more detailed the display was going to be and therefore didn't do the manual cleaning.  I'll certainly get in there and upload the thing again.  Anyway, the composition and focus is a thing I'd rather leave alone and let the photo pass or fail as is, but the cleaning is something I'll get in there to do.  I'll note when it's done; meanwhile, we can leave it as still in its first 2 days, I suppose.  Geogre 12:31, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Cool, never mind about the composition then :). I like it fine as it is. The problem with the focus, I think, is that no part of the center of the flower is in focus. It seems the focus is on the petals closest to the lens. Or something. It might not be possible to do anything about that after-the-fact. &mdash; David Remahl 12:36, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose for now. Scanner dust, grainy background, colors a bit too dull. I do like the composition and the wide format though. Ivan 03:57, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose, per above, unless can be corrected. Phoenix2 16:32, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, the white spot (dust ?) at the top should be removed.... Ericd 00:05, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Dust? Perhaps...Phoenix2 05:42, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Agree with other oppositions. --ScottyBoy900Q ∞ 03:32, 18 August 2005 (UTC)