Uploading your own creations

Posts: 4 · Views: 2290
  • 6289

    Many of the wallpapers here on wallhaven.cc get uploaded by their own creators. That's awesome! It's a great way for artists to show off their work and it's a great way for us on wallhaven to gather even more high quality wallpapers. It also means we can be sure that we're allowed to share those wallpapers. Sharing your own creations is a fantastic way to contribute to our ever growing collection.

    However there is one downside to this, which I'd like to address in this post: Sadly, not all creations are awesome high quality wallpapers. Sometimes it's just too obvious when they were made by a beginner with very little experience in photography / digital editing / drawing etc.

    Of course there is no shame in being a beginner! Every artist has to start somehow and skill is only obtained over a long time of continuous work. You don't have to hide your early attempts. Show them to people, ask their opinion! That's how you can figure out ways to improve yourself. But chose an appropriate context. For that purpose we're just not the right site.

    We strive to maintain a decent overall level of quality in our wallpapers. Some creations from beginners simply don't meet our standards. That's because our purpose is collecting and sharing high quality wallpapers. Conversely, it is not our purpose to give artists a platform for showing off their work and maybe gathering feedback. Of course if an artists' uploads meet our standards they are definitely welcome, but if they don't we will delete them. We don't do it to make you feel bad but simply because we believe it is in the site's best interest.

    If you want to upload a wallpaper you created but you're not sure if it'll get deleted you can first upload it at a hosting site like imgur and post it here on the forums. That way you can also receive feedback from other people.

    Sometimes people get very angry when they see that some of their uploads got deleted. That's understandable. I know from my own experience that it is very hard to view your own work objectively. Looking back after some time has passed, it is often easier to understand why someone else would not be completely amazed by the master piece you just finished. Uploading your heartfelt work and seeing it unceremoniously removed with a short message saying “low quality” is a very harsh kind of feedback. We don't blame anyone for disagreeing with that judgement. However in the interest of our site we will enforce it.

    Here are a few common indicators for “low quality” wallpapers created by beginners or “amateurs”.

    • Any photos taken with a cheap digital camera (including smartphone cameras) under bad lighting conditions. Even though camera sensors have improved a lot over the years, photos taken with a cheap camera are still often very easy to identify. They have a lot more grain, especially when the lighting requires high ISO settings. Their auto focus is limited and they often use digital zoom rather than a bigger lens. An experienced photographer may be able to alleviate some of these effects but that's a rare exception.
    • Obvious holiday snapshots, photos of your family, friends or pets, your house etc. We have a rule against personal photos. The main reason is that these photos are almost never taken with great care and, in fact, usually fall into the previous category. But even if you own a decent camera that doesn't mean your photos will be of high quality. Don't fall for the false advertisement that many megapixels equals great pictures. Taking a good photo takes time and preparation. Private photos are especially notorious because for those who took them it is even harder to view them objectively.
    • Unedited photos. Editing a photo doesn't necessarily mean changing it by adding or removing details. Quite often it is enough to make some minor adjustments to fix over or under exposure, remove some noise, maybe crop and scale the image down a little. However it is very rare for a perfect JPG to come straight out of your camera.
    • Cheap Photoshop effects. Our rules forbid “low quality edits”. Often when somebody has figured out how some of the more basic tools in Photoshop work, they will use (and overuse) them to “improve” pictures they like. Typical symptoms include heavy-handed filters, colorful layer effects and massive fonts. In some cases the outcome still looks acceptable or it's at least debatable whether it was in fact “supposed to look like that”.
    • Collages. If you take a bunch of good photos, chop them up and throw them together the result doesn't automatically look good as well. Of course not all collages are bad, in fact the simple ones are often more likely to be accepted (where two or three portraits are simply set side by side without any “effects“). Blending one image at half opacity over another one also falls into this category.
    • Photo manipulations with low quality materials. Photo manipulation takes a lot of practice. It also requires good photos. If you take a small photo and scale it up to fit your other material, even if it's just in the background, it will drag down the out come.
    • Bad drawings. Some people can draw, other can't or need more practice. Again, we're not a site for criticizing art. If it's not good enough it gets deleted. Sorry. :/
    • Badly scanned drawings and photos of drawings. Obvious indicators are slanted edges, shadows, missing corners, rough texture etc. This also often applies to scans of manga/anime artworks.


    xkcd.com/1014

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  • 15481

    It would be aa great aide to many artists (who actually do their own work) to get specific feedback as to why their works continue as "low quality" rather simpleg blanket the works as "low quality" ....As I know personally, I really think it's more a case of some heckler rather than simple quality issues. Thank you for your time.

  • 18814

    Is it possible to delete one's uploaded creations?

  • 18815

    dudely said:

    Is it possible to delete one's uploaded creations?

    Write me a PM with a wall number and a reason for deletion.

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