Good morning fellow wallpaper lovers! In this post I'll be talking about some of the problems and ideas concerning different sizes of the same wallpapers.
As you probably already know, different sizes of the same image are currently represented as different wallpapers on wallhaven. That means we store each file separately and the different sizes are also individually uploaded, tagged, flagged, faved etc. The advantage of this setup is that it's easy to search for specific resolutions. For example if your screen has a resolution of 1920x1080 (Full HD) you can search for that resolution and only find wallpapers that fit exactly on your desktop.
However this also means that we would technically need many different sizes of the same wallpaper so everybody can find a version that fits their screen. Of course we don't want to store too many versions of every wallpaper since, again, those would all have to be uploaded and tagged individually.
That is why we currently have a guideline stating that only the largest available resolution plus two more common resolutions (like 1920x1080 and 1920x1200) should be uploaded, if they also have differing ratios. This guideline was meant as a compromise. It was supposed to simplify things, but as it turns out many people have difficulty understanding it. It also means that we still have up to three almost-duplicates of many wallpapers, which can be quite confusing.
Consider the following example: There are currently 3 other sizes available of the same wallpaper: [url]https://whvn.cc/145380[/url] (1920 x 1080) [url]https://whvn.cc/2469[/url] (1920 x 1200) [url]https://whvn.cc/61474[/url] (2560 x 1600) According to the guideline above, at least one of these should be deleted (it's not clear which). The others may remain, but would still be treated as completely separate wallpapers. They were uploaded by different users at different times.
This situation is not quite ideal. We've been thinking about ways of dealing with it but ultimately it should be up to our users to decide how they prefer to use the site. I will now describe an alternative to the current situation that I would prefer:
- Only the largest version of each wallpaper remains. All smaller versions are considered duplicates and will be merged into the largest one.
- The search defaults to searching for wallpapers that have "at least" the given resolution, so larger matches may be found (exact search will still be available).
- We add a simple cropping menu to the wallpaper showcase that allows users to scale and cut any wallpaper down to the resolution they need. This tool would be quite simplistic – those who want more control (like selecting exactly which area to crop out of a large wallpaper) will need to use a dedicated image editing program like GIMP or Paint.NET.
Note, that this would only apply to wallpapers that differ in size or orientation (mirrored or rotated). If two wallpapers are different in any other way, like coloring, they will still be treated as separate wallpapers. For example the following is a different wallpaper from the black ones above and will not be merged: [4dgjmm] However its also has different sizes which would be merged into one: [url]https://whvn.cc/389[/url] (1680 x 1050) [url]https://whvn.cc/336986[/url] (1280 x 800) So in the end there would only be two versions remaining, one black and one brown.
This is how I suggest to deal with the situation of different sizes of the same wallpaper. Please let us know what you think via the following poll: »»» Click here to get to the poll ««« If you have any questions or other suggestions you can post them here.
Cheers