Wikipedia:What is a featured picture?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Featured picture tools:
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A featured picture should:
- Be of high quality. It should be sharp and of pleasing colour balance, contrast and brightness, free of compression artifacts (such as in highly packed JPEG files), burned-out highlights, image noise ("graininess"), and other distracting factors.
- The exception to this rule is the rarity or importance of the image being depicted. The more historically-important an image is, or the rarer the content of the scene, the lower the quality that can be allowed. For example, the first photograph ever taken is of poor quality, but is one-of-a-kind, whereas NASA has a surplus collection of high-quality images.
- Be of a high resolution. The picture should be of sufficiently high resolution to allow quality reproductions. While larger images are generally prefered, images should be at least 1000 pixels in resolution in width or height to be supported, unless they are of historical significance or animated. Information on image size can be found here
- Be Wikipedia's best work. It should be a photograph, diagram, image or animation that exemplifies Wikipedia's very best work.
- Have a free license. It should be available in the public domain or under a free license. Fair use images are not allowed. To check which category a particular image tag falls under, see the list at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags.
- Add value to an article and help complete readers' understanding of an article in ways other pictures in the article do not. It is important that the encyclopedic value of the image be given priority over the artistic value of the image. While effects like black and white, sepia, oversaturation, and abnormal angles may be visually pleasing, they often detract from the accurate depiction of the subject.
- Be accurate. Supported by facts in the article or references cited on the image page.
- Be pleasing to the eye. Taken or created in a manner which best illustrates the subject of the image. The picture should make a reader want to know more.
- The same exception to the rule of high quality may be applied here. The more historically-important an image is, or the rarer or more significant its content, the less aesthetically-pleasing it may be. See for examples: the first photograph, the only photograph of Chopin, the map of Lewis and Clark's expedition, the lowering of the flag on Zuikaku, the Solvay conference of 1927, a sign detailing apartheid in South Africa, and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.
- Have a good caption. The picture should be displayed with a descriptive, informative and complete caption. The image description page should have an extended caption that is suitable for featuring the image on the Main Page.
- Be neutral, An image should not put forward a particular agenda or point of view, but instead should illustrate the subject objectively. Specifically images of maps should be uncontroversial in their neutrality and factual accuracy (see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view).
[edit] Examples of good images
See: Wikipedia:Featured pictures
[edit] Examples of image problems
The images below exemplify issues that have caused images to be opposed. Even an otherwise good image may be rejected due to one or more of these problems. The phrase "blown out highlights" is often used to describe a common overexposure problem. It means that the bright parts of the image (typically clouds or areas directly lit by sunlight) are so bright that they appear on the photo as pure flat colour (usually white but sometimes other colours if the source of light is coloured). As a result, no detail at all is visible in these areas and it cannot be salvaged.
 Unencyclopedic and too small, over-exposed, undesired motion blur |
 Subject cut off |
 JPEG artifacts |
 Huge amounts of (square) JPEG artifacts |
 JPEG artifacts closeup |
 Even small tilt may be noticed. Editing the image may fix the issue. |
 Example image exhibiting blown-out highlights. Top: original image, bottom: blown-out areas marked red |
 Example of excessive image noise (grain) |
 Too shallow depth of field. |
 Excessively post-processed image. Left: original image, right: sharpened with a high radius, and both saturation and contrast excessively increased. |
