Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Vietnamese child soldier

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[edit] twelve year old ARVN Airborne trooper with M-79 grenade launcher

Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam. This twelve year old ARVN Airborne trooper with M-79 grenade launcher accompanied the Airborne Task Force Unit on a sweep through the devastated area surrounding the French National Cemetery on Plantation Road after a day long battle there. The young soldier has been "adopted" by the Airborne Division. 05/07/1968

Alternative version from new source

Reason

Good image of a child soldier and high resolution, no featured pictures from Vietnam war.

Articles this image appears in

Military use of children Army of the Republic of Vietnam

Creator

US Army Signal Corps, J.F. Fitzpatrick, Jr., SPC5, Photographer

• Support as nominator — Bleh999 06:26, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose - the quality is awful. Either it looks like someone has applied an extremely strong noise reduction, or it's been upsampled from the much smaller original. Even though the age and reproducibility may be mitigating factors, I would support a lower res version closer to the guideline in favour of quality. —Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξφ 10:29, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

To address your points, it has not been upsampled, rather this is reproduced from the uncompressed TIFF file not the gif file you linked to (gif only supports 256 indexed colors anyway, not a good comparison). The only retouching done was to the sky, because of bad grainyness in the sky, if you would like to try editing yourself I can give you the link to the tiff file. I didn't use a dust and scratch filter so you can't call that 'strong noise reduction' the original image is like this. Bleh999 10:37, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Support alternative version - much better, well done. —Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξφ 10:45, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

• Neutral: Child is a bit blurry, which is bad. But the image is historic, which is good. I'm not sure. On the one hand, it's certainly a historically interesting, perhaps even important photo. But it's not actually a very good photo.... Vanished user ^talk 10:30, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. It certainly looks like extremely strong noise reduction has been used on this image. Almost all fine-grained texture is completely missing. I visited the NARA website and although I didn't find the original TIFF file, the image I did find was quite terrible quality compared to this one and obviously some significant processing has occurred. Based on the original I saw, I find it hard to believe that it could be fixed to the point of FP. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 11:16, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose No matter how interesting this might be from a historical POV, there's no way it represents the very best that Wikipedia has to offer. Technically, it's practically unusable, thanks to vast amounts of sharpening followed by way-over-the-top selective blurring to hide the excessive noise that the sharpening generated... a genuine disaster of an image and a sure candidate for a "what not to do with a picture" gallery. mikaul^talk 11:21, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

what sharpening? I never sharpen any images I upload, you are confusing photographic noise with sharpening. Bleh999 11:34, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is accusing you of anything, but there is no disputing the fact that this image has been very heavily sharpened and blurred *by someone* prior to your uploading it. mikaul^talk 11:43, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I can assure you that you are wrong. Anyone can zoom into the edges and seem that there is no sharpening, sharpening leaves very clear artifacts. Bleh999 11:47, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Bleh, I think you are wrong. There are clear sharpening artifacts! Look for any contrasty edge and you will see a thick black line.. Eg, the pipes he is standing on, the tip of the grenade launcher, etc. Also, can you see in the sky a very distinct 'edge' where the sky becomes very noisy? It seems like a mask was applied only to part of the sky and or something. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 12:04, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. Actually, looking at it again, I think what happened is picture degraded a bit before anyone scanned it. The lack of detail in the child's face is typical of aged pictures from that time - some of the inks were pretty awful, particularly reds and yellows. Not need to attribute to photoshop what chemistry can all-too-readily explain.

But I do wish the child's face was clearer. Vanished user ^talk 12:24, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

But there is no chemistry on earth which could completely blur one part of an image and radically granulate an adjacent area! The lack of detail is typical of nothing except very careless photoshop work. Sometimes attempts to enhance detail have the opposite effect, and looks like one of those instances. I feel certain that the original, however small, degraded or poorly-scanned, would show more detail than this. Is there no way of getting hold it? mikaul^talk 12:48, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

[1] also accusing others of being careless is not constructive criticism, especially since you don't appear to know the difference between chromatic aberration and sharpening noise Bleh999 13:00, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Where exactly is the chromatic aberration that you refer to? I don't see anything overt. In any case, if you are referring to me, I wasn't trying to provide constructive criticism - I was justifying my reasons for why I don't believe it is FP quality. Its not as though you took the photo or scanned the photo. The original source image is what many of us have issues with. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 14:43, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• Support The encyclopedic use is more important the quality, which is decent for 1960s photography. remember criterion #3, wikipedia should have a featured picture of a child soldier, and I don't see any alternatives being offered here. Recesende 12:16, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I respect your opinion re enc value, but feel I should point out that there is no criterion stating that we have to have a featured picture of any specific subject. mikaul^talk 12:48, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

do you set policy on wikipedia? this is supposed to be an encyclopedia not a flickr clone Recesende 13:07, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

The policy has already been set by community agreement Recesende... The community politely enforces said policies. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 14:43, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose Abysmal image quality, e.g. heavy dust & grain in sky. Neutral on version 2. --Janke | Talk 13:26, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
• Support Alternative version. mikaul^talk 16:31, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

That is a nice edit I must admit, how did you solve the grainyness? Bleh999 20:13, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Desaturated the sky and masked off the boy for selective tweaking. It's had a small downsample, which helped a lot. The grain seems to have partly resulted from the negative, which gives horrible scans from modern film stock, never mind 1960's stuff, but the scan is really rough too... The sky was an entire rainbow of moiré and had to lose most of its colour. Glad you like it :) mikaul^talk 22:14, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• Support alternative - Resolves technical flaws, and very enc for child soldier, since it's so unusual to see them in uniform rather than filthy rags, not to mention wielding an American weapon rather than a beat-up Kalashnikov. Technically good enough. Oppose original due to quality issues. --TotoBaggins 18:02, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
• Support alternative I like it. ^8thstar 21:22, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
• Support alternative Superb work! Vanished user ^talk 22:22, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
• Support alt.--Vircabutar 08:38, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
• Support alternative Wow, great job with the edit, mikaul!
  • Support alternative Sorry, that was me just above; forgot to sign. —BrOnXbOmBr21 • talk • contribs • 00:03, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. The first one is too noisy; in the second one, the color cast is off and I don't like the desaturated sky at all. The boy also looks over-sharpened to me. The sky can be denoised pretty well without desaturation using GREYCstoration. What are the URIs of the originals you've been working from? Lupo 08:06, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

The URL is on the image page. The original sky is magenta, green, brown and cyan. Good luck! mikaul^talk 11:09, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

• Maybe I'm blind, but I don't see the URL. Both claim to have been derived from ARC image 530623, but are much higher resolution. And the caption of your edit says "from new source". So what's that "new source"? The only hi-res TIFF I can find for this image is this one, and that is indeed in such a bad shape that it's a wonder we've got the two images shown here. (But I still consider both still short of FP quality.) Lupo 12:16, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

• Well, that's the TIFF I used, I just assumed it was a different source to the original nomination. Part of the cleanup involved downsampling, hence the smaller size. Re FP quality, it certainly does fall short of one or two parts of criterion #1 but is exempted from these due to its historical significance. It has other FP qualities which more than compensate for this IMO. mikaul^talk 14:54, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Support alternative image shown on this page Second image is a great improvement over the first and the historical value far outweighs any technical shortcomings. While subject in Chinesechildsoldier.jpg appears to be much younger and, therefore, brings home the point better, this image is more contemporary. I would also support using an even more modern image, perhaps from one of the African conflicts where child soldiers are active today. CWPappas 05:58, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Promoted Image:VietnamchildsoldierEdit.jpg MER-C 07:13, 1 July 2007 (UTC)