[Commons-l] Allow Digital Negative (DNG) RAW format on Commons? (and increase filesize limit)

[Oldak Quill]

On 21/11/2007, Artur Fijałkowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2007/11/21, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
> > On 21/11/2007, Delphine Ménard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > How many people actually use any kind of RAW format on their digital
> > > camera should be the first question we ask. My take is that very few
> > > actually do.
> > > Well, I don't :-)
> >
> >
> > Serious photographers tend to if they can.
>
> And most of our photographers aren't 'serious' cause they don't have
> money for such cameras ;)
>
> I'll send large package of great cookies to anyone who write good text
> 'why you should upload not downsampled images to Wikimedia Projects'

I really don't understand your argument against higher resolution
images. It might be the case that most people wouldn't upload a larger
file if they had the alternative and most might not be aware what
benefits larger files bring. If this is true, it isn't a good reason
to not raise the limit and it isn't a good reason to not encourage
higher resolution images.

Several of the advantages of higher resolution images have already
been mentioned in this thread by other posters, but here are a few.

1) The most important reason is that the higher the resolution of the
image, the more uses it can be put to. Only images of sufficiently
high resolution can be used in print (a resolution far higher than the
average resolution on WF projects at the moment). The higher the
resolution of an image, the greater the range of sizes it can be
resized to when it is used and the greater its capacity to be cropped.
A 200 kilopixel image is severely limited in the range of sizes it can
be implemented in before it becomes pixelated and could only be put to
use on the web. A 20 megapixel image can be used on the web and in
print without looking pixelated. Further, it could be used in print in
a range of sizes without degrading in quality (e.g. as a small picture
in a book or a large element in a poster). The greater the diversity
of uses our content has, the more useful our contributions become.

2) Resolution, which is the issue here, is the ability to distinguish
between elements in an image - higher resolution makes the very
content of the image more valuable.

3) We have software on our servers to downsample images depending on
how we wish to invoke them. If a 5 MB image is used in an article as a
thumbnail, the reader will not have to download 5MB of data. The image
is downsampled to, e.g., 50KB. You seem to be suggesting that the
uploader only bother to upload the 50KB image. The image would still
be useful on the web, but it couldn't be used for much else. If it
costs the servers a lot to downsample large images, then we could use
a bot to download high resolution images, resample them and upload
smaller versions for use on the web.

4) Leading on from the last point. Commons both serves other Wikimedia
projects and is an archive unto itself. Printable images are useful
for both printed versions of WF projects (e.g. Wikipedia Readers) and
for people using Commons as an archive for entirely different purposes
(e.g. a student trying to find an image to include in a poster). The
higher the resolution of an image, the greater the capacity of the
image to fulfill the goals of Wikimedia Commons.

-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)