Wikipedia:Valued picture candidates/Mount Vesuvius from Pompeii

Mount Vesuvius from Pompeii edit

 
Original 1 - Visible from Pompeii are the two craters of the Mount Vesuvius volcano. In 79 AD, Vesuvius erupted violently, decimating Pompeii and Herculaneum and killing between 10,000 and 25,000 people. Vesuvius's last eruption was in 1944, and if it were to erupt like this again, scientists speculate 600,000 people would be killed.
 
Original 2 - New scan from original negative. Should the colors be adjusted to match the gloom of the older version?
 
Colors adjusted - proposed color-corrected version of the new scan to remove the perceived yellowish cast

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Morn (talkcontribs) 03:14, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reason
Taken in the extremely historic district of Pompeii, which we all know, this image is excellent in that it shows how close Vesuvius is to Pompeii. It is somewhat low res, but the EV overtakes that. I think the image should also be added to Pompeii, somewhere.
Articles this image appears in
Mount Vesuvius
Creator
Apparently Morn
  • Support as nominator --ceranthor 17:22, 21 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Very cool. wadester16 04:55, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Oppose - It needs some fine tuning, and is rather small. Concider nominating it for a Valued Picture, I don't think it makes the cut for an FP. Nezzadar (talk) 15:14, 2 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This is VPC, not FPC. ceranthor 21:18, 2 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support as creator ;-) --- Seeing that this image remains quite popular (for several years it was featured on the WP-EN frontpage on the anniversary of the eruption), perhaps I should see if I can track down the negative and have it scanned at higher resolution. At the time I had to use a print, and unfortunately more than about 1 megapixel resolution was out of the question. Morn (talk) 02:59, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As you can see, a higher-quality scan of the image is now available. If you feel the colors need to be adjusted, Nezzadar, adjust away.

I sort of like the bloody tone of the walls on the original image, but I'm not sure if this was due to color correction in the Gimp in the old version or if the new version has been excessively adjusted towards more yellow and green by the lab. It was a pretty overcast day, so I think it should look a little more foreboding. Morn (talk) 23:15, 5 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support. I weakly prefer the "hires, adjusted" version, but the color strikes me as a little weird in all three.--ragesoss (talk) 01:24, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Either #2 or #3, look way better. Staxringold talkcontribs 12:21, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm trying to get yet another scan (tomorrow perhaps), this time from a large print. The problem with the negative scans (#2 and #3) is that the lab always boosts the greeens (the grass) and blues (the sky) ridiculously. What I'd really like to obtain is a high-resolution scan without weird colors. We'll see if they can do it... Morn (talk) 23:36, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it looks like it will be a few more days before I get the "new new scan." :( Morn (talk) 17:37, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
 
Original 3 - "New, new" scan from large-format print.

Here's the final scan, now with better colors and very high resolution. Had to scale it down a little, because apparently the image thumbnailer can only handle images up to 12.5 megapixels. Morn (talk) 20:38, 28 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm bumping this to the top of the page so we can get some comments on all the edits. Makeemlighter (talk) 05:41, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Prefer the new, new scan. It might be a good idea to convert the full size scan to jpeg; big pngs are no fun for anyone.--ragesoss (talk) 01:53, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Asked to comment, so I'd like the newest scan. Of course, it can be later converted to jpeg form. ceranthor 02:02, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Preference for Version 3 (third down on right), just to clarify. upstateNYer 04:53, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. For the time being, I've put version #4 on the Mt. Vesuvius page, because that's the one I like best at this point. (The images also look different depending on whether your browser honors embedded color profiles or not. I.e., Safari does, Camino apparently doesn't.)

I've used PNG in case somebody wants to try out a different color grading. Re-compression of JPEGs generally yields artifacts. And besides, Wikipedia/Wikimedia allows uploads up to 100 MB, so I think it makes sense to use a lossless format. I don't want to have to scan this thing again every few years just because everyone's screen resolution has gone up a little and their CPUs can now handle higher-res images without croaking... Morn (talk) 22:08, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted File:Vesuvius from Pompeii (hires version 2 scaled).png --Makeemlighter (talk) 23:40, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]