File talk:Milwaukee Art Museum 1 (Mulad).jpg

Photoshopping for effect

I notice in the description of this photo that "two raindrops and a parking meter" have been removed and several other image enhancements have been carried out. Whilst I doubt that anyone would take issue with such techniques as contrast balancing or speckle removal, I see the deliberate mis-representation of a scene as problematic. No doubt lots of hard work has gone into bringing this image upto featured picture standard, but the aim of a neutral encyclopedia is to present things as they are, not as we would wish them to be. The digital removal of a parking meter seems to me to place asthetics before factual accuracy. If this question has already been debated and decided upon before then I would be grateful if someone would point me in the right direction. Greenshed 23:14, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I didn't see anything in the Featured picture discussion, but NPOV applies to articles. Although I understand the concern, I don't think the parking meter is relevant to the scene, which is meant to indicate what the building looks like, not what the surrounding parking meters look like (I'm not trying to be sarcastic, though it might come across this way). Additionally, the original on FlickR doesn't have the parking meter, so I think there's no way to get a photo with this parking meter without finding another source or taking another picture.--Chaser - T 00:14, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually the "parking meter" was the street sign in front of the entrance, probably a no-parking sign rather than a parking meter. On the NPOV issue, there is a general consensus among featured picture discussion participants that minor corrections of non-material image features are acceptable as long as they are disclosed and the original is still available. Another impetus which would have made me revert the removal of the sign could have come from the original photographer. Even though the CC-BY license allows for modifications of the original image, I'm usually responsive to the photographers' wishes. In this case Mulad, the photgrapher on Flickr, seems to have accepted the modification, as indicated in the image caption on Flickr. ~ trialsanderrors 04:37, 8 July 2007 (UTC)