[X] My Assistant

Well if the original artist used it and is releasing it as that, then obviously that's a moot problem. An artist whose source is 1080p but then uses Waifu2x to upscale it to 4k and then releases that 4k version, obviously the 4k one is the "highest one available" and so would be fine.

Where it's drawing a line for me is cases like this - the artist's final released highest-rez images are 1600x1200, but people can use Waifu2x to make them much bigger, put them up here in that artifically bigger rez, and reap the GP rewards, not to mention it consumes much more server space on the site (even if that's Tenboro's problem, it's still not cheap), and brings up the issue of potentially making the legitimately highest-quality versions of it being expunged for being "lower quality" when they really weren't unless you go by pure resolution numbers.

That said, yeah, Waifu2x isn't going to automate decensors. It's great at removing JPG or scanning artifacts, however.

I agree
+
So images converted from waifu2x or other image enhancement tools without upscaling should not get precedence even they look better than the original.

No. Waifu2x manufactures data to 'fill in' parts of the image.

Historically, upscales have not been allowed, but the reason for that is that historically, upscales have been worthless.

However, if these more sophisticated tools have evolved to the point where they are no longer worthless, a new discussion about whether they should be allowed or not is probably due, before disputes caused by replacements of "higher quality" galleries become a big problem.

I'm not saying yes or no at this point, but if they were allowed, there would be a requirement that they be clearly marked as such, and it would have to be similar to a decensored gallery in that both it and the original would be allowed to remain.

tldr.

the "cheating" gallery need to be expunged.

or, the original uploader wont buy the set to upload.

this is like someone buy a brand new car, and get stolen on the next day.
the thief add some nitros to it and sell it again.

Historically, upscales have not been allowed, but the reason for that is that historically, upscales have been worthless.

However, if these more sophisticated tools have evolved to the point where they are no longer worthless, a new discussion about whether they should be allowed or not is probably due, before disputes caused by replacements of "higher quality" galleries become a big problem.

I'm not saying yes or no at this point, but if they were allowed, there would be a requirement that they be clearly marked as such, and it would have to be similar to a decensored gallery in that both it and the original would be allowed to remain.

I could potentially see something like that as being one possible solution, but as more and more people get hardware capable of doing this relatively quickly, I'd argue that it may well need its own category (Upscales) and not just be a tag. Although it would also make it somewhat harder on me in a way - If I translate something, should I stick with the smaller-sized set as it's the originals? Or use the upscale, and take advantage of the extra resolution which will benefit me for word balloons/boxes that are quite small on normal rez and such?

I mean, it is somewhat less critical now that the galleries let you pick which resolution you download at (as opposed to the old one which was always the original uploaded images), but that also means that it's extra processing power and so on on the servers once something's uploaded, which also affects the site's bottom line.

Which, again, is mostly your problem since you're the one who handles the servers and all, but as someone who's run a few websites himself, I know that space and bandwidth are definitely the two biggest limitations for a site like this, considering the sheer amount of content. ~150 4000x3000 images as PNGs would still be almost 600-700 MB, which would normally be at least a few CG sets or maybe even a dozen or so mangas/doujins. That quickly adds up.

Obviously as JPGs they could be shrunk considerably smaller, but that would almost defeat the point of using something like Waifu2x in the first place.

Also worthy of consideration is that if they are allowed, we probably do need to set some kind of upper limit. Otherwise, all someone needs to do for a "new" gallery is just take the source and make a bigger magnification than the last guy. Of course there'd be diminishing returns at some point, and it takes more processing power for whoever's doing the conversion, but what might take minutes on a GPU today might be down to twenty seconds in five years from now.

This post has been edited by Dark Pulse: Dec 8 2016, 23:17

I could potentially see something like that as being one possible solution, but as more and more people get hardware capable of doing this relatively quickly, I'd argue that it may well need its own category (Upscales) and not just be a tag.

I don't see this being feasible. A tag would work perfectly fine, without the issue a category has of upscaled doujins/mangas/cg's all being mixed together. Unless you are suggesting a separate category for each category we currently have.

I don't see this being feasible. A tag would work perfectly fine, without the issue a category has of upscaled doujins/mangas/cg's all being mixed together. Unless you are suggesting a separate category for each category we currently have.

That could work too, but then arguably it'd be another "branch" of the site and I'm not sure how useful that is functionally.

The issue I'd have with it being a tag is that normal lists would get cluttered quickly with "duplicate" entries as the originals, resizes, translations, and decensors all would fall into the same thing, allowing for at least four potential variants for a set.

This is something that a lot of the booru's are dealing with right now as well.

A good first step at least is to establish a tag, as some have said in previous comments. Upscale is an obvious one, Waifu2x is another popular one because again, it's pretty much the only game in town for this.

Going to the personal side of things, I'm of two minds about it. I've certainly used Waifu2x and I've been impressed with the results, but that's always been for personal use only. Just about anyone can take an existing gallery, upscale it with little effort, and then repost. That seems rife for abuse if I'm being honest.

The issue I'd have with it being a tag is that normal lists would get cluttered quickly with "duplicate" entries as the originals

Not really, we would allow only a single "upscale" gallery (the best one). You may argue that someone may try to make higher and higher resolutions into an arms race for the bigger upscale. But that will not happen because of a very interesting fact: The further from the input the results of an NN give diminishing results, therefore there *is* a limit on how much you can "upscale" an image with an NN.

I can't find any definitive result on how high it can go but x2, x3 and even x4 upscales appear to be fine. There is a logarithmic function in how much Kolmogorov complexity (google it) can be added to the image with an NN. There will be nice results about this stuff shortly, or we could even run some experiments on galleries uploaded on EH in the future. So we will be able to make some sensible rule like: "an upscale is allowed through AI tools (e.g. Waifu2x), and the maximum upscale is of x5 (since higher upscales produce undistinguishable results.)"

Btw, I do like the idea of a tag. And a title notice as well, e.g. "[Enhanced]"

EDIT: fix'd

This post has been edited by blue penguin: Dec 9 2016, 06:23

While this topic takes upscales to a new level (excellent upscales vs piss poor, obvious upscales), this cannot be more abusable than the current thousands of galleries without a proper "cover", if you get my drift.
And as for this, cover replaces literally require minimum effort. All they need is time, bandwidth and storage space, not even processing power.

If EH starts allowing this, however, somewhere in the future, we'll eventually end up with high-res battles over who can come up with the best resolution, even with the NN limit.
And it would be quite problematic if some superhuman being with hawk eyes (20/2 eyesight?) couldn't tell the difference...

Completeness should be the main focus of the gallery system. Replacewars are far too common already to escalate to upscalewars on top of this.

@blue penguin: Enhanced.

The issue I'd have with it being a tag is that normal lists would get cluttered quickly with "duplicate" entries as the originals, resizes, translations, and decensors all would fall into the same thing, allowing for at least four potential variants for a set.

Solutions:
1. Set the excluded languages to filter translations
2. I have not tried it, but Luna's blacklist script probably does all this.
3. Tag flagging script thing
4. Use exclusion search e.g. -Decensored, -language:translated$

A tag is definitely better.

the maximum upscale is of x5 (since higher upscales produce undistinguishable results.)"

Yeah, there should be a natural limit due to diminishing returns and the limits of the current redraw algorithm. From my experience, I would say x4 is about the max and perhaps x3 or x2 for smaller images. An excessively waifu-ed image looks... blocky? It lacks details and can somehow look blurry.

That could work too, but then arguably it'd be another "branch" of the site and I'm not sure how useful that is functionally.

The issue I'd have with it being a tag is that normal lists would get cluttered quickly with "duplicate" entries as the originals, resizes, translations, and decensors all would fall into the same thing, allowing for at least four potential variants for a set.

Yes, tagging just hides the galleries, and there would still be 2-10+ new galleries from waifu2x for each existing doujin/manga/etc. (for different languages, translations, censorship, ...)?

This post has been edited by Simpleton8: Dec 9 2016, 12:31

If clutter is a concern, don't worry; I think EH has hundreds of thousands of stray tags in the system out of 400,000 total tag creations and counting (and about 14,000 "tag groups" with slaves and a master). Public stats here for transparency.

I appreciate the advertising by the way rraven, but I would suggest using Superlat's now that it's available. Mine was a simple, clientside DOM collapse; his is a much more sophisticated one.

(If there's something his script does not allow you to do, though, by all means, use a clientside script. Saves you the trouble of worrying about server load since the only load is from the initial query. Ideally, you should parse the API within its "sane" limitations, but if everyone starts doing that, it might eventually become a problem, hence why I don't rely on it at all. Millions of users going berserk with the API and not getting caught by flood control could quickly cause a Derpy.)

This post has been edited by Luna_Flina: Dec 10 2016, 19:34

Upscaled galleries eat up server space, screw up the GP system, could lead to the expunging of the originals, and to top it all off the upscaled version doesn't even exist in an official capacity.

Expunge the upscaled, ban repeat offenders if that's what it takes to keep actual high-quality scans up.

The administration has already stated that no changes to the existing ruleset will be made.

Took me too long to finish my beer, I literally dozed off about this thread (that's an internal administration joke )

To extend on Joe's post above we are well aware of waifu2x and well aware on how it performs its inner workings. And we can certainly say that waifu2x is simply awesome. As for the relevant rules have a look at the definition of superior versions on the wiki:

Images should be as released by the source. Conversions, "retouches", leveling, splitting double-pages into singles, or removing original source watermarks do NOT count.

https://ehwiki.org/wiki/Expunging#Superior_Versions

And the stance of the admin/mod team is that waifu2x is a valid form of retouching a scan. All other relevant rules for superior versions (on that same page) also remain intact.

In summary:

1. A gallery retouched by waifu2x is a valid gallery
2. A gallery retouched by waifu2x does NOT constitute a superior version to an existing non-retouched gallery
3. A non-retouched gallery does NOT constitute a superior version to an existing gallery retouched by waifu2x, unless it is a digital release in which case any form of retouching would not be consistent with "as released by the source".

waifu2x is a deep convolutional neural network. It does not perform a geometric (binomial or cubic) upscale of an image. Instead it bends the information contained in the image towards a more anime-like appearance. The fact that it is capable of producing bigger (in terms of resolution) is not relevant. The reason that a geometric upscale is bad is because it reduces the amount of information per square inch (or any other measure you may use) of an image. waifu2x does not reduce the amount of information per square inch, it fill in information (guesses) based on the networks knowledge about anime. This produces a slight loss of information of the original image whilst improving the overall consistency of the image by filling in information that seems more relevant.

By that evaluation waifu2x performs the same work as (good) grayscale levelling, loss of information which is weighted by image consistency.

This thread is now sticky, to ensure that everyone relevant sees it. (And to work as a precedence to similar software)

This post has been edited by blue penguin: May 12 2017, 06:25

I actually want to suggest feature "excluding an uploader from Front Page or Search Result" because of this.
I got Hath Perk: Tag Flagging and added tag "uploader:<username>" but I had this message "The tag uploader:<username> has never been used, and was therefore ignored."

I actually want to suggest feature "excluding an uploader from Front Page or Search Result" because of this.
I got Hath Perk: Tag Flagging and added tag "uploader:<username>" but I had this message "The tag uploader:<username> has never been used, and was therefore ignored."

Not the first time asked, and it *is* likely to (eventually) happen. It is on the to be aded, and see this too: /index.php?showt...p;#entry3777492

On the other hand, you're simply falling into the classical: don't like don't look at it rule. So it ain't a priority.

Wandered back in here since I've begun uploading my trove of stuff, and I see that this has come to a resolution. (Along with a bit of surprise to see I'd had a stickied topic...)

I'd say the solution leaves me feeling satisfied for the most part. It's not exactly perfect - someone with upscales can still get some "extra" benefits if people download that - but it does mean that the upscales won't purge the original since it's considered to trump the retouches), plus there's no incentive for a upscale war as a result of that pretty much. It's basically the option with the least evils - especially as there *ARE* valid reasons to have a visually upscaled/retouched gallery, which I do fully accept.

That said, it makes me feel much better about using it if I really needed it. It definitely is awesome at denoising noisy images, and for some stuff that's just awfully terrible rez, it can even do a miracle or two.

Thanks for coming to an answer on this topic. I can rest easier now.

I'd like to state the following regarding waifu2x, especially for someone who is impressed by it.

It's a tool and it implies certain method. Over time, new methods are going to emerge, new tools are going to be released. Over time, existing tools may also be updated and methods improved.

If you want to upload enhanced version of your files, do so. But. Even though most people would prefer higher resolution images with removed noise, you should never consider them superior. When you can, try to always include original files, as a separate gallery or at least as a link/torrent.

Consider the following possibilities:
1. You upload an enhanced gallery. Few months later, a new tool similar to waifu2x is created, and it produces slightly better results for your specific collection of files. Then either you can re-process the same original files, upload them as a new gallery and call it superior version, or someone else can do the same with your original files. Not going to discuss the point of continuous (or endless) updating of single gallery, but this will only be possible if original files are preserved and available.
2. A new image viewing software is released which allows enhancing images in real-time. If it produces results very similar to waifu2x, it'll be beneficial for everyone to just remove the enhanced gallery from disk and use the original files, simply because their file size is 2x-4x smaller. Again, if you never share original files, it will keep wasting everyone's disk space.

Like already mentioned, people could just download original files and enhance them for personal use, with their preferred parameters and methods. You may upload many enhanced versions of some gallery, but in the end, that original gallery is going to be the best material for any future enhancement method.

This post has been edited by genl: Nov 20 2017, 22:28