Bootskins...[yes, another thread]

I agree 100%, and I commented as such on one persons submission...

...but...er *looking sheepish*...then I have to put my hand up to admit to bending this just a little myself when I submitted the Alien-Dial one I just had accepted https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?library=32&SkinID=716. I pondered this long and hard before doing so but the reason I did so was 2 fold.

1) Because of the dithering needed to render something in just 16 colours, a thumbnail version which samples this tends to exhibit very ugly artifacts making an already compromised image look even worse. An example would be the moire pattern exhibited by this one: https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?library=32&SkinID=690

2) there is no number 2

I only applied a gaussian blur of 0.3 to reduce the effects of the dithering and hoped this wouldn't even be noticable on the full sized preview...I'll gladly re-submit if this is is a step too far...

I don't think you're refering to this very slight edit though, but rather the posting of an entirely different 24bit colour "preview" which is what someone had done...?

i do my jpegs off my 4 bit bitmaps and it makes the preview look worse than the real deal is... oh well, that way, people will be surprised when they download the bootskin...
heres an example::: http://www2.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?library=32&SkinID=587

but hey, it happens. i havent "cheated" so far and i am proud of it.

Unless everyone 'modifies' reality it's just misrepresentational.
When anyone looks at the bootskin section as a whole and one skin preview appears so 'superior' to others, when you find out it is a false impression motives are questioned.
My bootskins are 'free sharing' too, but their previews are accurate. I think any higher-res impressions should be left for the full colour Bootskin proggy when it's released....)

Dithering the preview to make the thumbnail more appealing is just dressing mutton up as lamb.

I call it false advertising....maybe even a sorry attempt to boost downloads [as if that is the Holy Grail of skinning]....)

dressing mutton up as lamb

Good old English expression

K...I've re-submitted mine, and the small preview looks awful whilst I can't tell any difference on the large preview, but at least it's a level playing field now...

I wonder if a different way to generate small thumbnails could be looked at for the bootskin section to avoid these artifacts?

Just to be clear how slight the difference was this shows both the before and after previews submitted...I can tell which bit is which, and probably so can others now they know to look, but I would put this more in the catagory of "making sure a product is photographed in a good light for a catalogue" rather than false advertising...like the "serving recomendation" pictures, or any pot noodle advert

http://img24.photobucket.com/albums/v73/sputuk/temp/difference.jpg

(I just didn't want people think that what I admitted to was anything major, and both preview jpgs were created from the 4 bit BMP)
[Message Edited]

Sput....usually when a preview is clearly not representational of the file upload it'll be rejected, though usually that's just a matter of people calling all their previews 'preview.jpg' and they are all overwritten by the same image.

Several times though we get clean full-colour images as the bootskin preview which are simply the wallpaper image, and NOT the bootskin image.....that's just plain inaccurate.....a wall is a wall....a 4 bit Bootskin is a 4 bit Bootskin....they are two different animals.

I have no intention of singling anyone out as deceivers or something, just that anyone trying to make a preview look 'better' is better off striving to make the actual bootskin look better instead....

jafo - point taken, and hence why I've re-submitted as soon as possible without the slightly tweaked preview this time...

It's painful to see a preview look so disproportionatly bad though having spent time to try and optimise the actual BMP though. I'll live with it...

Is there any intention to go back and moderate those submissions that do have very misleading previews? I came across a number when going through a load in looking at how to best optimise a BMP for a boot screen.

Bootskins = mutton dressed as mutton (winky)

Is there any intention to go back and moderate those submissions that do have very misleading previews?

Perhaps that 'should' be done to maintain a 'level playing field' for all....

Jafo - do you have any tips on how to optimise a BMP for both the actual boot screen AND the autogenerated mini-preview at the same time?

I notice that some images manage this even with extensive dithering used in the 4 bit image, but I'm not sure why. Maybe if the dithering uses a fixed pattern then the pixel sampling for the mini-view would hit the same pattern at each point and it would work better? I'd used error diffusion dithering as the colour/contrast ranges seemed to be best catered for that way, but the mini-preview really does look BAD now, and is less representative of the final work than it was

Sput...generally monochrome Boots work better as there are more gradations of the one colour so the preview sampling is less 'blocky', but other than that, if all the previews are equally 'iffy' there is no problem as people will just view the full image and determine a skin's relative 'quality'.

The doctoring of the preview image is not fooling those who 'understand the reality' but will unfairly inflate a work's popularity as many will DL only to be 'disappointed' to some degree or another....

I'm not sure the dithering issue is quite as simple as the number of colours available as ones like this https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?library=32&SkinID=690 demonstrate, but never mind. I don't plan making too many boot skins to worry about it

Graded images will always have issues with colour reduction and scaling....)