Covers Update-able

I've been able to grind out the live album cover update feature. It was tricky because the system now holds on to the cover being replaced (for the historical record) while rebuilding the necessary copies of the master image.

- The master image needs to now be a minimum of 300 x 300 pixels
- JPG, PNF, or GIF (I might expand the image types in the future if needed)

From there the system builds:

- 300 x 300px image for the album page
- 200 x 200px image for the band / artist pages

This feature is the stepping stone to get the queued albums working, which is primarily an issue with synching album Ids with their images, including evidence images.

For now though, feel free to try out the new upload feature on live albums that do not have 300 x 300px images currently (as can been seen by the light gray border around cover images).

One further note is that I'm planning on a feature that will allow you to replace a single image that is used for multiple albums. For example, a compilation that appears in the system as 12 distinct albums for 12 distinct bands may have the same image. I'm now recording a digital signature for each of the cover images. I'd like the feature to be able to replace all images with the same signature if any one of them is updated.


Kevin

Wow, works great! I updated this one to try it out:
[bandtoband.com] https://bandtoband.com/band/electric-birds/the-chase

I think 600x600 would be a good recommended size going forward as I said in the other thread. Given that's what Discogs uses, it's often impossible to find larger than that for the majority of releases anyway.

One question is: how are things handled now if a cover is very close to square, eg. 594x600? Do we want a threshold where if they're close enough to a 1:1 ratio, the image for display purposes is sized to square? Or is it easier just to display a warning while we're uploading a non-square image?

I also notice that live images all have /master-of-puppets/ in the URL. Not sure if that's intended!
[bandtoband.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com] https://bandtoband.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/images/covers/master-of-puppets/11...

Good questions, I'll try and give a peek behind the curtain here as to what's going on with the cover images and why this stuff sometimes takes longer than one would hope to get this stuff working.

--

- "how are things handled now if a cover is very close to square, eg. 594x600?"

One of two things happens here:

1. If the uploaded cover is not a perfect square, as in the case of the 594x600, and if the shorter size is within 5% (an arbitrary value I selected and can be changed), when the system builds the necessary sizes (300px on album page, 200px on band/artist pages) it'll load the master image into memory, shave down the longer side down to 594px to create a square, then execute the resize to 300px. This happens without altering stored the master image so that is always retained in its original form.

2. If the uploaded cover is not a perfect square and the shorter side is more than 5% shorter than the long side, it'll resize the image to the necessary ratio where the longer side is the required length of 300px and the shorter side is proportionally matching, say 198px (or whatever). This happens for cassette images for example.

--

- "I also notice that live images all have /master-of-puppets/ in the URL. Not sure if that's intended!"

The master images are stored in that directory. Master images are used on the site if the requested size (say 300x300px) is larger than the Master image itself. The site doesn't not create derived versions of the master cover if the master cover isn't large enough for the derived image. So in this case (an excellent example):

[bandtoband.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com] https://bandtoband.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/images/covers/master-of-puppets/11...

The master image is 249x251px. For the band/artist pages, the master image has been loaded into memory, shaved down to 249x249px then a 200x200px version was created and stored here:

[bandtoband.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com] https://bandtoband.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/images/covers/200/11545.jpg

and used on the band page:

[bandtoband.com] https://bandtoband.com/band/misfits-with-john-cafiero

However, since the master image is smaller than 300px, the album page version is not constructed and the master image is used instead, inside a 300x300px grey bounding box on the album page:

[bandtoband.com] https://bandtoband.com/band/misfits-with-john-cafiero/i-wanna-be-a-ny-ranger

--

As for using 600x600px we can move to that size (considering that's what Discogs uses). I'm only slightly concerned that we'll struggle to find lots of images at that size, but can easily be convinced otherwise. Does anyone else have an opinion on that subject?


Kevin

Ah, now I see.

I'm not suggesting forcing 600x600 or some change like that. I'm just recommending it for updating these covers where possible. So when we can't find anything at 600x600 we upload the next best we can find, no problem. But if someone goes through and updates a whole lot of these covers to 300x300 images when 600x600 was available for most of them, that doesn't make sense to me.

I'm definitely down for 600x600px images. When we first started this project 20 years ago, the best we could muster was 144x144px and we had hard times even then to get big enough images. If it's your experience that 600x600px are easy to source, then I'm happy to bump up the requirement. It literally takes 10 seconds to implement the variable change. Are you able to regularly find 600px images? I personally find it hard for older releases with ancient cover scans.


Kevin

Looks good to me! I tried replacing a few...

[bandtoband.com] https://bandtoband.com/band/clash/cut-the-crap
[bandtoband.com] https://bandtoband.com/band/bruce-springsteen/born-to-run
[bandtoband.com] https://bandtoband.com/band/yo-la-tengo/summer-sun

I'd imagine the biggest improvement project would be replacing all those 144x144 7"/10"/12" label-only images...

Oh, I've got a solution for the center labels.

Waiting in the wings is a feature that takes the center label, auto pastes it into a vinyl image of the appropriate size (7", 10", 12") and builds the master image for you. All with a couple of clicks.

It's already fully functional, I just haven't figured out where to plug it in yet.

BGZ: Do you have an opinion on the minimum pixel size for uploaded covers? I have it set at 300px but am happy to go to 600px as Bloopy suggests.

Kevin

300x300 seems fine as an absolute minimum, with 600x600 being a recommended minimum as per Bloopy.

On second thought, if there's no cover image available that's at least 300x300, shouldn't there be some way to load a smaller image, even if it's temporary? I tried entering this album with a small image since I couldn't find anything bigger, and it wouldn't let me add the entry at all. I finally got around it by blowing up the smaller image to 300x300.

[bandtoband.com] https://bandtoband.com/queue/album/102046

There are a two places where minimum cover requirements can be enforced:

1) at the initial upload on either the live edit page or the queued edit page

2) when making the album live

Now we have to decide what size and when that size should be enforced. If it's easier for you to upload a smaller stub cover and only enforce a minimum size when an album is made live, we can do that.


Kevin

300x300 as the enforced minimum is perfect. My recommendations were more just aimed at the other editors now that we have the ability to update cover images.

bgz: Did you see my post about AI upscaler tools? Try blowing up the Great Plains cover image using such a tool if you haven't already and compare the results: [waifu2x.udp.jp] https://waifu2x.udp.jp/

I tried this out too, updated a couple of the smallest covers with larger ones from discogs:
[bandtoband.com] https://bandtoband.com/band/stressface/oh-youre-welcome
[bandtoband.com] https://bandtoband.com/band/fields-of-shit/s-t

All works smoothly, and I'm totally on board with 600x600 being the standard where possible with 300x300 the minimum. Only another 32,000 odd to update...

Okay, I'll leave the enforced upload minimum to 300px while changing the text to suggest a minimum of 600px.


Kevin

Thanks for the tip about waifu2x, Bloopy -- it's pretty slick.

The Great Plains cover does look a bit funny totally smoothed out like that. The original probably needed the left side cropping slightly and then maybe the 'High' setting to keep a bit more realism, haha. Though I searched picclick.com and found this larger one that could be straightened and cropped as an alternative:
[www.ebay.com] https://www.ebay.com/itm/165349256981

Also, a reminder that a bunch of covers that are neither square nor rectangle have larger versions in evidence waiting to go, eg. vinyl images and slim jewel cases with the cut corners. So in some cases we need to wait for evidence access.

You've got a much keener eye for these things than I do, Bloop.