Re: [libregraphics-resources] Website pour the copyleft image test suite project

[Jehan Pagès <jehan.marmottard@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 5:37 PM, Elle Stone
<ellestone@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 02/12/2015 06:52 AM, Jehan Pagès wrote:
>>>
>>> Awesome, I'll wait for the test images and any fix to the text.
>>
>>
>> Any news on this? :-)
>
>
> Sorry for the delay! Feast or famine - what follows is probably too much for
> one email, but here goes:
>
> My understanding about the project is that it will be a general resource for
> creative purposes. So a major goal is to assemble a collection of images and
> other resources (eg ICC profiles) that can be released with free software
> and can be used by artists without their having to seek out explicit
> permission from the creator, yes?

Yes. Though I propose to start "small", which is only the original
test suite for now. This for the simple reason that I have only
limited time to develop a suitable website for all kind of resources
and I definitely can't handle too various type of files immediately.
But in a few months, we may start to broaden the project and launch a
call for ICC files or other resources.

Of course we should prepare the project in the expectation of going bigger. :-)

> It might make sense to organize the resources by some combination of typical
> usage (eg testing raw processing algorithms, printer behavior, profile
> conversions, etc), type of image (eg synthetic vs photographic), and of
> course non-image resources such as ICC profiles. There would necessarily be
> overlap between various ways of organizing the resources, meaning many
> images will fall into more than one category.
>
> There are many excellent test images available online, that are
> copyright-encumbered, which nonetheless would be nice for free/libre artists
> to know about. So a list of links, organized right along with the
> corresponding free/libre resources, would seem to be a good thing to include
> on the website.

Listing other resources is a good thing. I don't really understand
projects which tries to jail the user to never get out of their
website.

Actually this can be a way to quickly start referencing other kind of
resources before we are able to host them ourselves. Also in some
cases, some websites already do an awesome job at proposing some kind
of resources under Libre licensing. For sounds for instance (not
graphics, but still very useful for "creative" purpose), there is
freesound.org. I often use it for small sound effects to include in
videos/animations. And it is so good that for the time being, I would
not see a good reason to propose and host sound resources for
instance. But I would definitely list it for people looking for sounds
to reuse in projects.

> A nice resource to include on the website would be links to collections of
> public domain and possibly also CC images. Given that such websites already
> exist, the images on our website need to be focussed specifically on
> suitable test images plus whatever other type of resource we decide to
> include. Otherwise the website could quickly be overwhelmed with too many
> images with no particular focus.

Yes, as said above, I think that we should focus on the test images
for now, but not because there are already many websites with images,
but rather to give us time to organize things well, incrementally,
small project after another (which is another way of saying the above:
I would not have time to organize well if all kind of images were
coming **now**).
But in the long run, I would not be against having a lot more type of
image resources. There are indeed a lot of websites that propose
graphics under suitable licenses, but they have 2 main issues, in my
opinion:
1/ these website are usually very bothersome to browse, because of not
suitable internal organization;
2/ these website are often not purposed for "reuse", and therefore
contents is adapted for end use, not reuse.

I'll take one of the most common website where I sometimes go for
images as an example: Wikipedia (and in particular Wikimedia commons).
They have a lot of images on various subjects, but the search engine
is not very adapted, you have to click on the image to see the license
(Wikipedia uses mostly OK licenses, but you still have to check;
sometimes there are fair use images, or simply licenses incompatible
with your project) and can't filter much. That's for the point 1/.
But most of all, all these images are usually OK to go on a website,
maybe sometimes you are lucky enough to get high resolution versions
which can go on a printing project, but that's still very limited.
Also I would like to have access to raw versions of some images and
make my own processing. That's for 2/.

Basically I really think a website for a creative use case is missing,
when you are not looking for finale use beautiful images, but useful
and usable images, which may not even look nice at first sight but
could still fill your need.

In other words, this Libre Resources project is really about "raw"
resources for creative work, not processed artworks for display. In
the end, we could go very generic on what we accept as long as it is
useful, not because it is beautiful.

All this to say that in the long term, when we would have put up some
decent website with a proper organization system, I would not be
against going much global on what we would accept.

> I think initially it might make sense to start with a one-page website,
> organized into sections, until we reach a good sense and consensus of how to
> best organize what will eventually be a diverse and growing set of
> resources. At some point the one page will probably need to be converted to
> a table of contents with links to the resources.
>
> To get started, here are some links to excellent resources, more or less
> organized by type/purpose. Most of the links are to copyright-encumbered
> images, which fact should be prominently noted on our website so people
> don't get confused:
>
> 1. Collections of images released under public domain, etc
> http://www.getty.edu/about/opencontent.html
>
> 2. Raw files for testing raw processors and interpolation algorithms
> The dng files on http://www.libraw.org/articles/bayer-moire.html
>
> 3. Synthetic images for various purposes
> http://brucelindbloom.com/index.html?RGB16Million.html
> http://www.brucelindbloom.com/index.html?ReferenceImages.html
> http://brucelindbloom.com/ click on "Info"
> http://brucelindbloom.com/index.html?ProfileEvaluation.html. These files are
> in the CIELAB color space and they cover the full range of real colors. I'd
> like to put together something that's more user-friendly, that's been
> converted to a suitably large RGB working space.
>
> 4. Testing scaling algorithms
> http://www.4p8.com/eric.brasseur/gamma.html
> http://www.imagemagick.org/download/image-bank/16bit840x840images/README
>
> 5. Testing openexr processing
> http://openexr.com/downloads.html
>
> 6. Testing monitors
> http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/Calibration/monitor_black.htm
> http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/Calibration/monitor_sensitivity.html
> http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/Calibration/monitor_gradient.htm
> http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/all_tests.php
>
> 7. Testing printers
> http://www.pixl.dk/download/
> http://www.hutchcolor.com/Images_and_targets.html
> http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/test_images.html
> http://www.normankoren.com/printer_calibration.html
> http://www.gballard.net/photoshop/pdi_download/
>
> Thoughts on soliciting and reviewing submitted material:
>
> We probably need to set up a process for soliciting, reviewing, and
> accepting/rejecting submitted material, including website links. It seems to
> me that submitted material should be accompanied by a clear statement of
> what makes the material suitable for inclusion on our website of free/libre
> resources. So we probably need to formulate a clear statement of what kinds
> of resources we are looking for.
>
> Also, as has been noted, the pxil.dk image does have a nude torso, which is
> probably one of the best possible subjects for checking tonal renditions in
> a print. But of course that might raise issues with some people. So at least
> a warning for such links and images would be appropriate.
>
> It seems to me that there are some procedural issues that need to be worked
> out regarding submitting and reviewing materials. As this email is long
> enough already, I'll send a separate message on the topic.

I'll answer on the other message.

> Elle, hoping above is helpful to get the conversation started.

I think it's a good start. :-)

Jehan


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