Forum:Icon sizes

Our use of low-resolution icons (mostly pixel art) is somewhat problematic on high pixel density displays (mobiles, tablets, notebooks, and more recently 4K/5K desktop monitors): the low-resolution images appear blurred compared to other content on the page.

This affects a number of things:
 * Race/Character icons (e.g. [[File:IconSmall_VoidRevenant.gif]]), which have no high-resolution equivalent (and seem to be getting increasingly difficult to interpret)
 * Some icon templates using "optimised" 16px sprites, e.g. ClassIcon druid.png vs . (screenshot)

We should probably switch to producing the icons at 2x the intended pixel size (so e.g. 32x32 for images intended to be displayed in-line with text), and let the wiki software resize them down for low-density displays. Resizing pixel art is, however, tricky, so that might degrade the image quality on older displays. (Ideally, it would be neat to tell mediawiki something like "if you need a 16x16 version of this image, use this other file instead," but I'm not sure how viable that is from a mediawiki and/or gamepedia perspective)

Any thoughts on this? — foxlit (talk) 00:08, 19 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes! The same thing should apply to the Source inline templates (Warcraft RTS) templates as well unless icons like the WoW expansions are created for them. 00:52, 19 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm not against it, but that means redoing every single icon on wowpedia, does it? Should ask User:Klakmuf, User:Kandooww, User:Coobra and the other people doing icons for their opinion Xporc (talk) 08:25, 19 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Lets see the differences:


 * (64px) Saberon 64x64.gif]] [[File:Saberon 64x64.gif
 * (32px) Saberon 32x32.gif]] [[File:Saberon 32x32.gif
 * (18px) Saberon 18x18.gif]] [[File:Saberon 18x18.gif


 * 18:28, 19 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I Only see kitties Xporc (talk) 20:03, 19 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Slightly reshuffled: Saberon 64x64.gifSaberon 32x32.gifSaberon 18x18.gif]] and slightly smaller: [[File:Saberon 64x64.gifSaberon 32x32.gif[[File:Saberon 18x18.gif]] (screenshots: 2x 1x). In general, if we want to keep the 18px target size, it might be better to compare downsampling from 36px and 72px images (rather than 32 and 64), but the resized versions don't seem to be too bad on this image (pixel-art faction/expansion logos with transparency might fare worse). — foxlit (talk) 22:48, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Why not aim for 64px to match Blizzard's icons? -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 00:12, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Not against it, seems to work the best overall. Plus we already resize the 64x blizzard icons for items from just linking items like so: Azerite. 01:23, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think that resizing artifacts are minimized when the source image is an integer factor larger than the target size, so going for 2x/3x/4x of the display size would probably be better. Using 2x puts the icon creator in control of at least one of the icon sizes, while 4x means that almost everyone would see a software-resized version of the icon. NPC/Race icons are currently 18x18px in size, hence the suggestion to use 36x36 for those. Of course, if we're happy with the results of resizing down from 64x64, we might as well go with that. — foxlit (talk) 23:15, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't see why not 36x36 wouldn't work. Anything that is a square and bigger than 18x18 is fine by me. 09:40, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Is there a reason we use 18x18 at all, though? It's a bit of an odd dimension, since powers of 2 are typically more standard sizes in general. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 09:45, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure, maybe Coobra (or someone who started this project) would know. 09:48, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

It has been a couple months so.. I went ahead and requested for NPC, Race, and RaceIcon to change/add support for 16px dimensions so 64px icons can be uploaded starting today. Thanks to PCJ for going through and adding the changes. 17:15, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Resized by software
Icons that should be resized by the wiki (or use a provided svg file if available) - 19:15, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Race icons (as stated above)
 * Logos used on templates, e.g. WA-inline (compare the difference side by side: File:WarcraftAdventures logo 16x42.png vs WarcraftAdventuresLogo3.png)
 * Class Icons File:16px-ClassIcon demon hunter.png vs File:ClassIcon demon hunter.png (side by side, respectively: 16px-ClassIcon demon hunter.png]] - [[File:ClassIcon demon hunter.png)
 * Profession Icons File:16px-Inv misc armorkit 17.png vs File:Inv misc armorkit 17.png (side by side, respectively: 16px-Inv misc armorkit 17.png]] - [[File:Inv misc armorkit 17.png)
 * Faction Icons (Alliance and Horde should use their SVG variants provided by KD3)
 * Since there seem to be no objections, I suggest we start making the template changes next week. — foxlit (talk) 21:10, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
 * What about creating the hundreds of new icons? Xporc (talk) 21:40, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for volunteering. If you could have those done by Monday, that'd be great. — foxlit (talk) 21:45, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
 * In all seriousness, I don't actually intend to create any of those icons. In many of the examples Surafbrov highlights above, we already have higher-resolution images that can be sampled down to currently-used size by the wiki software, so it's mainly a matter of pointing the templates at the right files. For race and npc icons, where we do not have 2x versions ready to go, I don't think we need to do anything other than just make sure the relevant templates allow 2x images to be used, and make a clear suggestion for the dimensions of any new icons people make. If someone feels inclined to go through the old icons, they're free to do so; otherwise, we're no worse off than we are now. — foxlit (talk) 21:59, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Have we settled on a new size to use? -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 21:53, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
 * (For NPC icons,) 64x64 resized down to 18x18 seems like a fine starting point: it seems to look okay in Coobra's examples above, gets us parity with Blizzard icon sizes, leaves some room for future pixel density improvements, and keeps the option of switching to resizing down to 16x16 later if we decide we want a uniform icon size between items and NPCs. — foxlit (talk) 22:08, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

After talking on Slack about the deal with the removed subzones for zone templates, KD3 pointed an example for the links on his sandbox page but I have also noticed the icons section. For the faction logos specifically, what about we start using SVG? It works very well no matter ldpi or hdpi. 22:50, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Just setting an example about SVG vs PNG: if available, it is best to use SVG for icons that come in that format. An example of this is the Alliance and Horde icons (provided with links above) and the WoW Icon which is used in the template Wow-inline. 08:37, 23 May 2018 (UTC)