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Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Rosa canina

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Botanical Illustration of Rosa canini

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Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 2 Aug 2010 at 07:23:30 (UTC)

 
Original - A scientific illustration of a rose plant
Reason
Couldn't resist and was kicking myself for not nominating this with the chicory illustration. A very high quality image, a good digital restoration (this image is actually over 100 years old and somewhere there's an original copy of the book this is from with a darkened, yellowed version of what you see here), obvious EV to its subject and could probably be placed on other botany and horticulture-related articles.
Articles in which this image appears
Rosa canina
FP category for this image
Plants/Flowers
Creator
Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé, upload by Kelson
  • Support as nominator --I'ḏ♥One 07:23, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: The extent of the digital restoration (which is not documented on the image page) appears to be turning the background into a bright white. This is a nice image, but I'm not really seeing FP flare. The EV is OK, as it shows the flower at various stages, but it's not used that well in the article. I'm open to persuasion, but I'm not loving it right now. J Milburn (talk) 11:23, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • If you feel it's not used well enough on the article then I must take credit for that since I added it to it. It seemed like the two were obviously missing each: A picture from the article of what its about that was actually drawn by a botanist, I don't know I'll try to figure something out. This is what about a century has done to the paper version, which I really doubt would pass here, everyone would lock in on the obvious oxidization, and I wouldn't call the background bright white so much as just plain, old, regular white. The image was presumably white itself before the paper aged and in spite of this digital bleaching the quality of the other colors like the greens, reds and pinks haven't dropped and all of the sketchings and texts have retained their quality and are easy to make out. That's why I think this should be featured, that, and its high resolution. Also, why didn't you think this was over whitened? It clearly had deteriorated somewhat from its original. --I'ḏ♥One 13:05, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I would like to see at least one of these illustrations (now in the public domain) featured on the Main Page for a day. My reasoning: 1), an ocean of effort went into making these original illustrations. 2), Wikipedia is now benefiting from all that effort. 3), I don’t think much of our visiting I.P. readership knows these sort of scientific illustrations are now featured here. Certainly they have EV—we all seem to agree on that. But, 4), I think the exceedingly professional look of these old-fashioned scientific illustrations are “eye-catching to the point where users will want to read its accompanying article,” which is one of the two primary objectives we look for in FPCs. So… 5) I throw my support behind this one (and not the one below), because this one has nice popping colors. I don’t have a problem with the restoration making the paper look white; it’s clear that no faint detail is being lost and it looks nice and clean. Greg L (talk) 23:10, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I can also get behind this. The restoration is minimal, but that's fine (though there are some ugly flecks on the main flower) and I have moved the image to the taxobox, where it complements the photo nicely, which I feel deals with any potential EV issue quite nicely. However, the restoration does need to be documented on the image page. J Milburn (talk) 11:41, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: As with the chicory image, I looked for other scans of the same plate for comparison. Google has this. There are some differences in the colors between the two versions, most noticeable is that in the Google version the thorns are a purplish shade and the ours the thorns are bright red. There is another scan here from the same source I found for the chicory image. This has the same paper yellowing issue as before but shows the nearly the same purplish shade in the thorns as the Google scan. Comparing the images side by side, it appears that in our version, the blank areas of the page were colored white, but the everything else was left alone. You can see this in magnification, especially just above the fruit on the left where there is a gap between the fruit and the wilted petal. This process has left several artifacts in our version, for example in inset 6, the hairs above the bud should be black on white but on our version they are black on parchment yellow. It appears also that the yellow at the base of the petals is not in the original but actually due to page yellowing. I agree that, with the hundreds of illustrations, this is an excellent resource for plant images. But the color correction done on our version was, IMO, rather sloppy and incomplete. I have hopes that eventually a more sophisticated color correction system will come along which will due justice to the originals, but we don't seem to have it yet.--RDBury (talk) 13:24, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • If "the original" you're basing the thing about the yellow on stage 1 you mean the Google version, I'm pretty certain that scanning is wrong and its levels are off. Compare theirs with the actual flower and what do you notice? That Google's has leaves which are much darker and petals that are much lighter, in fact I think I do detect some yellow even on Google's stage 1. Considering Thome's talent and his obvious love of his profession in botany I don't think he would make such mistakes, and what do you mean by the fruit on the left? I agree about the yellow behind the hairs of stage 6, but our version is still the best of all of them, and not to be mean, but I think that's too nit-picky to entirely oppose an otherwise very useful and otherwise well-done restoration of scientific art. --I'ḏ♥One 14:02, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The original I'm talking about is the actual original, what the image must have looked like before page yellowing and ink fading took their toll. It doesn't exist anywhere now, I'm extrapolating from the scans available. Obviously that involves some uncertainty, but I think it's clear that what we have is very different from what the original must have looked like. Google's version is at least more consistent about the color correction, but I agree that it's probably not that close either. I'm not saying the originals weren't excellent work, but I don't think our scan or the other scans I've seen do justice to them to the level I'd expect in a FP. By the "fruit on the left" I mean, of the two fruits (or hips), the one on the left, though you can find examples of what I'm talking about all over the image. The significance is it reduces the EV of the image when petals appear parchment yellow when the actual petals are pink and white (as seen in in photos in article).--RDBury (talk) 14:49, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Btw, the biolib.de site, listed as the source of our image, seems to link to yet another scan as well, [1]. This doesn't have the yellowing issue though there is obvious discoloration on the left side of the page.--RDBury (talk) 15:06, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • That last link is one of the poorest quality yet, but I get what you mean about the petals, though I don't really see a problem with the slight yellow there, I don't think it detracts from the general color gradient you're supposed to notice, I could look at our version and just think it's off-white. I'm still not sure what you want me to notice about the rose hips. --I'ḏ♥One 19:42, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not promoted --Makeemlighter (talk) 02:37, 2 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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