Wikipedia:Picture peer review/McCain2

McCain with blue background

The picture is high-res, and the subject is a very famous person. Wikipedia received a high-res official photo of McCain from his Senate office a long time ago, and the present image has been obtained by cropping the official photo, and changing the background from black to blue. I assume that this is an acceptable type of modification, right? The image of McCain himself has not been touched up or altered in any way.

Nominated by: Ferrylodge (talk) 19:41, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

The original failed FPC in February. To be honest, I find the new background somewhat distracting, and the cut-out isn't particularly smooth either, so I think this is unlikely to pass FPC. Thegreenj 22:41, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the comment. I'd forgotten that the previous version was put through FPC. Do you think a different color would work better? Are we allowed to change the background color with/without approval from the image donor? Maybe I could ask the Graphics Lab to do a better cut-out.Ferrylodge (talk) 00:05, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, you're on Wikipedia! You can do whatever you want with the free pictures you find here. If you're editing a picture that another Wikipedian created, it's nice to drop a note, but by no means required. For the picture itself, I think the original black is fine. It keeps the focus on the face. But if you have any ideas to make it better, the graphics lab is definitely a good place to start. Thegreenj 00:23, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thx. :-)Ferrylodge (talk) 00:47, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, I went to the Graphics Lab, and they came up with this. What do you think? I like it much better than the black suit on black background.Ferrylodge (talk) 12:39, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you wanted to get rid of the black background, this does a good job, especially in the thumbnail. At full size it still has some problems—and I know cut-outs, especially black-on-black, are incredibly hard to do—like the uneasy fuzziness of the suit-background transition, which doesn't at all match up with the back of McCain's head, which remains in focus. In the end, I think I might prefer this one for use in the article, but I doubt it would pass FP. In the original nom, the main opposition was that this was not a particularly outstanding portrait, and I think this still holds. It doesn't really capture any character; it's just some guy in a formal portrait. This hasn't really changed, and combined with some minor technical faults in this one, it would struggle at FPC. But definitely a solid, encyclopedic photo. Thegreenj 01:11, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks again for the comments, Greenj. I think we're on track now to probably use this latest image as the lead encylopedia article photo, with no plans to pursue a featured picture nomination.Ferrylodge (talk) 01:18, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Seconder