A navy photographer snapped this photograph of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, just as the USS Shaw exploded. (80-G-16871)The better image
Keep Photographs are most appropriately in JPEG, I believe WP guidelines have stated, and the PNG has photo-shopped out the blemishes from the JPEG. I whole-heartedly think the blemishes are fine, given that the photograph is almost 66 years old. The correcting of the blemishes was adequate, but not perfect. Puddyglum20:34, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But are the blemishes on the original print? Looking at this cropped version of the same picture from the US archives there aren't any of the blemishes found in the JPEG version of this picture. I believe the blemishes are from the scanning technology used to digitize the photo because the blemishes aren't seen in other versions of the image, like this one. Therefore the PNG version with the blemishes removed is closer to the original than the JPEG version. -- Esemono12:43, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The US archive picture does not follow your point, as there are blemishes on it, and it's such a high compression and low resolution that the blemishes aren't able to be seen. Your proposal is simply this: Digitally correct the blemishes of the JPEG and put into PNG format. Or contrariwise, scan print as a PNG and digitally correct the blemishes. My stipulation with this proposal is that PNG is less desirable according to wiki-guidelines, and correcting blemishes loses authenticity. Either way, it's a great featured pic, but the blemishes bring out the remarkableness of the photo: an historical photo with such amazing composition and detail.
But they're not the same blemishes and my proposal is this: Wikipedia doesn't need two pictures that are are exactly the same. The point of the blemishes is the digitizing and scanning of the original print created the blemishes as shown by two completely different prints with two different sets of blemishes. The argument that that the blemishes are part of the picture's history are moot because they're not on the original as shown by the existence of two images scanned from the original print that have two different sets of blemishes. -- Esemono23:32, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My point was that the blemishes in the JPEG are so small that they can't be seen in the low-quality US archive picture. That being said, how can you say that the blemishes are different? It's splitting hairs at this point. JPEG = preferred over PNG. The PNG has smudges where blemishes used to be. My goal is to defraud the PNG as being a better scan than the JPEG, and also insist that "restoring" a picture is not the same as "smudging over blemishes". Puddyglum16:26, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Keep the JPEG version, migrating it over to Commons if you'd like (but that's irrelevant for featured status, as its already featured). The PNG has dark smudges where some of the apparent image scratches are in the JPEG. So, instead of having obvious artifacts, the PNG has things that look, at first glance, like part of the scene but are probably artifacts from an image "repair." Enuja(talk)07:18, 29 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The .png version is without a doubt a very poorly retouched version of the delist candidate jpeg. They are clearly both from the same scan, but the .png has had some original detail (assumed to be blemishes by the retoucher) cloned out, making it a (marginally) less accurate record of the event. I restore images like this for a living and would be happy to attempt a better clean-up of the jpeg, if that's the consensus opinion. But please, don't delist it in favour of the .png! --mikaultalk10:24, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Indeed the png looks a bit over-retouched. If anyone wants to try to create a new clean-up, there's an original master image (TIFF, 7MB) of a crop of this image. The DVIC has a hi-res JPEG image of that version here. Lupo11:05, 25 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What's the deal with improvements to existing FPs? A very similar situation is being discussed on the FPC talk page: should a newly retouched version be delisted, or allowed to stand as a (clearly) improved version of the original candidate image? I've downloaded this one to correct but it's far from clear whether I should re-upload by over-writing the original, or delist as proposed here and re-nominate, which seems a bit of a pointless rubber stamp operation. Thoughts? --mikaultalk16:55, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
