GuildWiki:Style and formatting/Images

(This is a proposed revision; the currently accepted version is located here)

Image guidelines
When uploading an image to GuildWiki, the following guidelines should be followed.


 * All uploaded images must comply with the rules set out in Image use policy.
 * Images for use in primary articles should cropped to display only the subject of interest.
 * Images with natural lighting are preferred over images which have had their brightness or contrast adjusted.
 * Images without obvious compression artifacts are preferred.

If you are uploading a replacement for an existing image, it is not necessary to create a brand-new image. Simply go to the image you want to replace and click on the link to "Upload a new version of this file."

See Screen capture for tips on taking good in-game screenshots.

Image name

 * File names are case sensitive. "Ascalon.jpg", "ascalon.jpg", and "Ascalon.JPG" are three different images.
 * Lowercase file extensions are preferred, and where possible, the image name should follow Use lower case. In the above example, only the first, "Ascalon.jpg", follows this correctly.
 * Images uploaded to GuildWiki should be given descriptive filenames that clearly and concisely summarize the content of the image.
 * Screenshots should not be uploaded with their original filenames, e.g. "Gw001.jpg". Anyone uploading an image with a name in that format will be asked to re-upload the image to a more descriptive name.
 * While image names should be descriptive, they should not be excessively long, either, to make it easy to link the image in articles.

"Image:Arkjok Ward Buried Treasure.jpg" is an example of a good, descriptive image name:
 * It has a lower case file extension (".jpg") and follows GW:ULC through the rest of the name.
 * It describes what is depicted in the image: where to find the Buried Treasure in Arkjok Ward.
 * It is not excessively wordy: "Image:Location of Buried Treasure on an island in the northeast corner of Arkjok Ward.jpg" would have described the same thing, but wouldn't have been easy to link to.

Format

 * The JPEG / JPG format is the preferred format for the majority of images used on GuildWiki.
 * The PNG format can be used for small images (profession icons like Image:Warrior-icon.png, skill effect icons like Image:Hex-degen.png, and inventory icons like Image:Ever auto tonic.png). Compared to the JPG format, PNG generally retains higher quality at the expense of a larger filesize.  Thus, using PNG format for images larger than about 64x64 pixels is discouraged.
 * Note: The MediaWiki engine performs very poorly when scaling PNG images, which is why the format is usually used only for icons that won't be scaled.

File size
Individual images should be no more than ~150 kilobytes (kB) in size. The total size of all images used in an article should not exceed 512 kB, except in special cases (e.g., armor galleries).

Image size
There are no restrictions on the dimensions of uploaded images. The MediaWiki software can resize images automatically, so there is no need to scale an image before uploading it.

To resize an image when displaying it in an article, you can specify the width for the image to be displayed at. For example,  will display the image as follows:



For more information on how to display images in wiki articles, see Wikipedia's help page on images.

Image licensing
See Image license guide for information on providing licensing details for images.