Wikipedia:Picture peer review/San Francisco 1851

Portsmouth Square, San Francisco, 1851


During the daguerrotype era portraiture predominated. Street scenes were unusual and this - from the height of the California gold rush - has particular historical value. Focus is good enough that most of the building signs are legible. I've kept the file on the large side for that reason. Removed the artifacts painstakingly with (I hope) minimal affect to actual data. Adjusted the histogram and denoised the sky. No other changes from Image:SanFrancisco1851.jpg. Appears at California gold rush and boomtown.


 * Nominated by: Durova Charge! 02:22, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Nominated at WP:FPC. It's getting unanimous support on Commons and is in more articles now. Durova Charge! 10:02, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Comments:
 * I confess I'm not a big fan of colourised daguerrotypes, less still ones where the dyes have faded, as they seem to have here. Still, it's an oddly compelling image and you've worked a miracle getting it presentable. I'd address the tilt (it's already been heavily cropped anyway) and replace the two faces (!) of the people in/near the doorway on the rhs (an easy mistake to make, under the circumstances ;o)) before nominating. I'm still not sure about FPC though, and would appeal for another opinion before spending any more time on it. --mikaultalk 01:21, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually the image isn't tilted. If you check the buildings carefully you can see they were built on sloping ground.  I've been strict about following guidelines by restoring the image only, not deliberately altering any of the original information.  Cropping was a hard compromise: the dimensions of the original were not rectangular, minimal information was lost, and I needed to get the file down to around 5 megs.  The alternative would have been downsampling.  This way, the only things lost are sky and dirt foreground, neither of which convey information.  Thanks for the critical feedback.  I've got another daguerrotype of San Francisco harbor I'm fixing up.  Literally, the artifacts are in the thousands.  I'm getting up to 600% magnification and fixing two pixels at a time.  But for some odd reason it's a pleasure.  Durova Charge! 05:12, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 * If you run the verticals up to the side of your nav window, there's a definite 1~2° CCW tilt. Should it be fixed? Well, first impressions are everything for this kind of shot, I think. This kind of radical cleanup is already way more lossy than any slight orientation fix. But your work is great and here as elsewhere it's a huge improvement, no need to justify it! Oddly relaxing, I know.. glad to hear you're enjoying the therapy! --mikaultalk 08:55, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually another editor noticed a one degree CW tilt. Having gotten two responses (I hadn't seen yours yet) I went into Photoshop and double checked.  With 1.1° CW correction the building facades come out even.  Thanks for spotting that.  Durova Charge! 23:09, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Seconder:

