Can we please ban photoshops?

I'm all for banning horrible edits, but lumping categories together and saying "this category is all garbage, without exception" is bullshit.

Example: Pretty much everyone has voiced their support of banning "addition/removal of fetishes." post #500194 is an example of a one I certainly wouldn't delete. Photoshop turned this picture that I blacklisted into a picture I favorited. I would be pretty angry if this post were to be deleted on the basis that "it's a photoshop, therefore it's trash."

The colored tag needs a careful look through. A lot of posts under it don't even have a parent and I've already found a couple that were incorrectly tagged (post #349705 post #407595). I'd be more willing to do it myself if danbooru wasn't loading so slowly for me today.

jxh2154 said:
You're viewing this the wrong way - if the original image is fucked up, it shouldn't be uploaded. If it "needs" extensive fixing, it's not danbooru quality.

If we're going by this philosophy then would it be reasonable to delete post #477938 and it's child post then? It "needed" fixing to be considered likable so it would make it non-Danbooru material.

Coconut said: Example: Pretty much everyone has voiced their support of banning "addition/removal of fetishes." post #500194 is an example of a one I certainly wouldn't delete. Photoshop turned this picture that I blacklisted into a picture I favorited.

And... so what? I don't care if you like the shop better. It should not have been done. You're missing the point - it doesn't matter if you like an image or not, danbooru is not for posting images edited by users to better suit their tastes.

Whether the shops are "good" or "bad" is not of any relevance.

Although I don't have much input to offer, I'd to have to agree whole-heartedly with jxh. Since, after all, Danbooru is an image board for original, high quality content. So, with that said, I'd like to say I would not oppose the banning of photoshopped content - whether any given post is good or not.

And one thing that really bothers me about 'shops is that the original artist's name is still used in the tags, causing content on the site to become "muddled-up" between original work, and third-party edits (I actually had a dispute over this on another image board before).

I'll also go-ahead and say this in advance, just in case: "Well, then add photoshop to your blacklist" is not a valid argument.

jxh2154 said:
And... so what? I don't care if you like the shop better. It should not have been done. You're missing the point - it doesn't matter if you like an image or not, danbooru is not for posting images edited by users to better suit their tastes.

Whether the shops are "good" or "bad" is not of any relevance.

I disagree. I think the decision whether or not a picture is worthy of Danbooru should be decided by its quality alone. It's the picture's origin that's not of any relevance, in my opinion. Bad art is one thing, but if a shop changes a picture in a way that many people agree that it's just as good or better, and the picture still meets Danbooru's quality standards, I fail to see why it should be deleted just because someone other than the original artist touched it.

You know, I can't help but feel that these disputes are caused by not having a completely clear-set policy on what Danbooru is.

One side is saying "Danbooru is only for original, high quality content", and the other is saying "content should be judged on its quality alone". Yet, nowhere, to my knowledge, is it officially stated which paradigm the site should go by (am I allowed to say "identity crisis"?).

Anyway, that was just a little side-thought.

Bap - People tell me that Danbooru is for high-quality Japanese artwork, though this may be because Eastern countries tend to make better high quality artwork than western countries.

Danbooru might needs to write down all those little hidden policies (i.e the Parent/Child system) littering the site before writing down whats it's official stand on artwork and/or it's purpose.

Bapabooiee said:
You know, I can't help but feel that these disputes are caused by not having a completely clear-set policy on what Danbooru is.

That sounds like less of a side-thought and more the core of the issue. The people saying "photoshops should be banned because Danbooru is for original, untouched artwork only" are essentially saying "photoshops should be banned on Danbooru because photoshops are banned on Danbooru."

Honestly, I'll agree that not much of value would be lost if this motion were go to through. But it's my position that there are some photoshops that are worth keeping, and that's enough to keep the current case-by-case system that the moderation queue adequately provides.

Oh, and also, how would hard_translated images fit into the fold of the aforementioned issues? Assuming a given pic was hard-translated by a third-party, would it not qualify as a photoshop?

For example, post #209627.

Coconut said: I disagree. I think the decision whether or not a picture is worthy of Danbooru should be decided by its quality alone.

You'd be wrong, however. There are, and must always be, rules that are external to the quality of the image itself. Else there would be nothing against uploading well taken photographs of lions on the African savanna. "Quality art" is an enormous domain, danbooru only services a very, very small slice of it. Theme, origin, style, etc., they all play a part in setting the boundaries of what Danbooru is.

Bapabooiee said: Oh, and also, how would hard_translated images fit into the fold of the aforementioned issues? Assuming a given pic was hard-translated by a third-party, would it not qualify as a photoshop?

The argument for hard translations is that they serve a purely utilitarian purpose, which none of the other image types discussed in this thread can claim. The others are all 100% aesthetic changes.

Even then, the vast majority of senior users on danbooru are violently opposed to hard_translations anyway so they seem to be shitlisted as much or more than a lot of the stuff in this thread.

jxh2154 said:
You'd be wrong, however. There are, and must always be, rules that are external to the quality of the image itself. Else there would be nothing against uploading well taken photographs of lions on the African savanna.

I think this is a bad analogy if only because people are talking about stuff generally accepted, such as anime style art. This site has always had an issue with rules that aren't obvious unless you lurk the forums a lot.

You say danbooru is not for posting images edited by users to better suit their tastes, but where on the site does it flat out say that really?

I think we can all agree that at the very least, macros and motivators should be mentioned in the rules, and that it should also be more clear that uploading photoshops is discouraged.

Editing the photoshop wiki to be more similar to the hard_translated wiki, i.e. "uploading a photoshopped image is discouraged due to etc." would be a start.

jxh2154 said:
You'd be wrong, however. There are, and must always be, rules that are external to the quality of the image itself. Else there would be nothing against uploading well taken photographs of lions on the African savanna. "Quality art" is an enormous domain, danbooru only services a very, very small slice of it. Theme, origin, style, etc., they all play a part in setting the boundaries of what Danbooru is.

Okay, fair enough. There are definitely a few extra qualifiers that need to be enforced beyond "quality." You mentioned "theme" and "style," both of which I completely agree with. But the problem with "origin" is that, sometimes, that's a property that is not immediately apparent from the image itself.

Now, to be fair, many if not most photoshopped pics fail to meet the standards in those qualifiers, which is, I think, why this thread exists. Photoshops usually suck ass. But the main problem I have with a hard ban on photoshops is that it could give rise to a situation in which a picture that is otherwise stellar in all respects gets rejected solely because touched it up with photoshop. If you wouldn't even know that something was photoshopped unless you were told it was, rejecting it solely on that basis while ignoring any other redeeming qualities just rubs me the wrong way.

Just my opinion. I know I seem to be in the minority here.

I don't see a meaningful way to define what it means for an image to be 'original'. In the case colored images where the artist of the line art explicitly allowed other people to colour it, how are the colourings less original than if the drawer had coloured them, in which case we'd probably just post both versions? Would it be okay if they'd gotten a friend to colour it offline, and then posted it to their own account?
If it's important that only one artist touched the work, should we delete all collaborations as well? What about music_videos where the 'original' work is the music, and someone else made the flash? Is this just to ban works that non-Japanese have laid their hands upon?

In images like post #458959 there are some significant alterations, and I wouldn't have known it was a photoshop if I hadn't seen the original. There's probably instances where the poster wasn't even aware that the image was a photoshop. While I do think there's a case for deleting simple colour swaps and the likes as redundant when the original is found, I don't really see how post #177324 makes this post any less suitable for this site than most reference_works. There's not much logic in going "Ooh, that's a good picture," and then "oh wait it's based on something else delete this shit."
It can be hard enough to find out if something is a nude_filter sometimes, so who is going to go through pictures and check that they're not photoshops?

I'm sure there's a lot of crap that deserves to be deleted in each of the listed categories, and we obviously don't want users uploading their own alterations of things already on the site. But a blanket ban doesn't seem to me like a justifiable or particularly enforceable rule.

I wouldn't mind absolute bans on decensorings and fetish add/removals in addition to nude_filters, macros and motivators as absolutely universally pointless, and strong discouragement on the rest.

There will be exceptions to any rule. I'm not going to say that every photoshop ever should automatically be deleted. We don't enforce any of the rules with an iron fist like that, not even things like furry.

On the other hand, we don't allow furry in general either just because there are a few furry pictures that aren't so bad. However, this is essentially what people are saying we should do with photoshops. The fact is that the majority of photoshops suck (some categories more so than others) and most aren't approved already. Seriously, look at photoshop status:deleted. Is it any surprise that so many shitty photoshops are uploaded when we don't tell people not to upload them?

I can understand allowing something like collaboration, like zatchii mentioned, because in these cases the artist allowed it. My concern is about unauthorized photoshops, which are a disservice to the original artist, regardless of whether the resulting images are aesthetically pleasing or not.

Soljashy said:
My concern is about unauthorized photoshops, which are a disservice to the original artist, regardless of whether the resulting images are aesthetically pleasing or not.

As has been discussed previously elsewhere, most Japanese artists are strongly against their material being posted anywhere on the Internet without their permission. Let's not pretend that respecting the original artist is a significant concern of ours when the act of uploading their art to Danbooru itself goes against their wishes.

I'll say it again: the two factors that should go into determining whether a photoshop belongs on Danbooru are quality and triviality. Nude filters are banned because they are of poor quality with virtually no exceptions. Image macros are practically banned because they are all trivial to create.

For all other classes of image on the OP's list (with the exception of colored images, which, in my experience, are usually high-quality), most, but not all, images in that class are either low-quality, trivial to create, or both. The best solution is probably a 'soft ban' of the same sort that seem to be applied to furry and guro.

So, basically, what evazion just said.

glasnost said:
As has been discussed previously elsewhere, most Japanese artists are strongly against their material being posted anywhere on the Internet without their permission. Let's not pretend that respecting the original artist is a significant concern of ours when the act of uploading their art to Danbooru itself goes against their wishes.

Two wrongs don't make a right. I would like to say that we may be going against the artist's will by posting his work here, but at least we're treating it with respect. Thus all the effort into giving them proper credit, etc.