Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Abraham Lincoln 1860

Abraham Lincoln 1860 edit

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 22 Jun 2013 at 02:51:48 (UTC)

 
Original – Abraham Lincoln, Republican candidate for president, 1860
 
Alt 1 - cropped (more-or-less: the plate wasn't perfectly centred) to the edges of the lithographic plate.
Reason
A high-quality lithograph, with much interest in it in the previous nomination. (Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/Young_Abraham_Lincoln), which I didn't get done in time due to a lot of stains.
Articles in which this image appears
Abraham Lincoln, et al.
FP category for this image
Wikipedia:Featured pictures/People/Political
Creator
Original image:
  • Thomas Hicks (1823-1890, artist)
  • Leopold Grozelier (1830-1865, lithographer)
  • W. William Schaus (publisher)
  • J.H. Bufford's Lith. (printer)
Restoration:
  • Support (either) as nominator --Adam Cuerden (talk) 02:51, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Great restoration! :) Mediran (tc) 09:50, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support (prefer alt) Obviously. Beautifully restored. Cowtowner (talk) 15:25, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support both original and Alt 1 (preferred)Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 15:56, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral Very, very nice. But my concern is the amount of white space around the most important part of the image. The borders and outside text may have been an inherent part of the original, and I respect your decision to keep it, but I can't help but think of File:Robert William Thomson - Illustrated London News March 29 1873.png, which everyone was so willing to support, only to have the image cropped and unused in any English article. What's the point, then? And maybe it's just me, but I have difficulty reading the very bottom-most text, even in the image description page. This image's penultimate, but most often viewed, fate is as a poor thumbnail within the article. I would rather see a larger version of the colored portion of the image next to the article text than all that dead space and "invisible" text at the bottom ("Hon. Abraham Lincoln, ...etc.") and a pushed-into-tinydom portrait of Lincoln in 1860. – Kerαunoςcopiagalaxies 16:09, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • It would be misleading, however. And the Robert Thomson change was from a period when the conventions for images still tended towards only allowing very small ones in articles. Now, that said, if we wanted to argue about cropping to the edges of the lithograph plate - there's an obvious mark at the edge of the indentation - I could see that. Adam Cuerden (talk) 18:25, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Why would it be misleading? Surely the crop would reference the source: this image here. And the original nomination was for the borderless plate. (Am I using "plate" correctly? I don't understand the terminology. I assume plate means the color/shaded portion.) I don't think removing the border completely may be possible because the y in "by Hicks" on the bottom left of the shaded area seems to dip into the white a bit. Regardless, the important part of the image, Lincoln, is being pressed into a smaller size to make way for a whole lot of blank white or difficult-to-see text that could just as easily be mentioned in a caption or on the image description page. Again, I'm thinking of the article and readers here. This image is obviously remarkable as-is. But I would support a crop since that would serve the article better, in my opinion. – Kerαunoςcopiagalaxies 18:37, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • I'm afraid you're not using plate correctly - the coloured area isn't the plate (well, the colouration is likely a separate plate, but not what I'm referring to) If you look very closely, you'll see that, outside of the text, and outside of the coloured area, there's an obvious, but very slight, change in colour. Lithographic plates are applied with a lot of pressure, and compress the paper fibres, so, if you know what you're looking for, you can know exactly where the original work ends. Cropping to the coloured section is rarely a good idea: it just makes the image look like its white point was misadjusted, since this sort of colouration is a fairly obscure tradition nowadays, and wasn't particularly common even by this period. Adam Cuerden (talk) 18:49, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
          • Thanks for correcting me. Ooh, I see the color change—subtle. I saw it before but didn't make the connection that it went all the way around. I would settle for a crop to that point, which makes me wonder why all the extra white space around that, but I do understand your point regarding the white point. Don't get me wrong, I'm in the extreme minority so I'm not sure you even need to do a crop at this point, but keeping the publishing information makes perfect sense and would supersede my previous comments regarding cropping even that out. So, to clarify, a crop would still be of the entire original plate. – Kerαunoςcopiagalaxies 19:16, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
            • Eh, it's useful to have extra paper, because - for example, Americans use 8.5"x11" paper, but most of the other countries use A4, and this is likely one of the old bookbinding paper sizes - folio, quarto, etc. The differences in proportions means that what works for printing on one type doesn't work so well on the others, unless you can crop to shape, and, unless you want to remove paper texture from the image, any bits of blank paper will be noticeable. However, people'll know as there's a tag telling them, right? Uploading now. Adam Cuerden (talk) 21:39, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support LOC does a good digitization job. Abe's signature contributes to EV. Brandmeistertalk 22:09, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I should just warn that I have seen at least one case where a signature was printed with the image. It may well be that's a real signature specific to this copy, but the LoC don't mention it, and I wouldn't want to presume. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:21, 14 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Looks valuable even if it's a facsimile signature. I'm neutral on alt 1 in this case. Brandmeistertalk 19:35, 14 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Alt 1 Already his face is much larger in the frame. Btw, your work, Adam, is exemplary, hope you realize my concerns were only with white space. But thanks so much for offering a pristine crop to please a customer :) – Kerαunoςcopiagalaxies 22:20, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Quite understood; it's just that I want to make sure the image elements are all clear. particularly where this sort of tinting effect is used. It's very easy to create a crop that confuses the user, such as (as discussed before) not showing that the image is tinted by not including some of the untinted paper. A bit of discussion often leads to something acceptable to everyone. =) Adam Cuerden (talk) 21:19, 14 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Seems like an ideal solution to me; stated my preference for the alt above. Cowtowner (talk) 21:57, 14 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted File:Thomas Hicks - Leopold Grozelier - Presidential Candidate Abraham Lincoln 1860 - cropped to lithographic plate.jpg -- — Crisco 1492 (talk) 03:52, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]