Posted under General
This clause exists in both wikis but I don't really understand why. Why can't a post be tagged with both simple and transparent? Having them mutually exclusive makes it harder to find non-simple transparent backgrounds.
For a simple transparent background: post #4720750
For a non-simple transparent background: post #4590991
Not sure how things like the second example should be handled, but if the entire background is transparent like the first example, then there is no background. Tagging it as simple background would be inaccurate.
Also, though I'm sure most don't even consider this when adding it, simple background is for images with backgrounds that can be easily removed. A transparent background already has that part covered, so tagging both would be redundant. That clause seems pretty odd to me, though.
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Having no background sounds like one of the simplest things an artist can do. A pure white background has nothing going on and usually adds nothing to the image. That sounds just as applicable to simple as having a transparent one. The white -> transparent conversion can also be done in about 10 seconds in photoshop. In digital media, a lack of a background is still a background, since the canvas size doesn't automatically conform to the non-transparent objects.
blindVigil said:
Not sure how things like the second example should be handled, but if the entire background is transparent like the first example, then there is no background. Tagging it as simple background would be inaccurate.
Inaccurate, or just pedantic? The simple background wiki mentions pictures that can be "easily extracted from the background, and placed on other backgrounds". A lot of people searching simple background are probably trying to find such images, and it really doesn't get much easier than already being transparent. Excluding them on a technicality is just hurting searchability for no particular benefit.
Cattywampus said:
Inaccurate, or just pedantic? The simple background wiki mentions pictures that can be "easily extracted from the background, and placed on other backgrounds". A lot of people searching simple background are probably trying to find such images, and it really doesn't get much easier than already being transparent. Excluding them on a technicality is just hurting searchability for no particular benefit.
Isn't that also pointless? I would search transparent background before I went looking for art that would require extra work for me to use it for something.
I'm the same mind as blindVigil, transparent_background is more a lack of a background so it can't be a simple_background.
Also, don't forget that it's easy to add a background to a semi-transparent border (transition) of an image, but it's quite difficult to make a transparent white (solid-color) background under the image transparent. post #4717798.
At the same time, "simple" is a broad concept. Although it is indicated that a plain background is simple, an expressionless background also belongs to this definition. post #4720914 with gradient_background (not added). post #4720939
Such pictures can be easily extracted from the background, and placed on other backgrounds.
For the indicated reason, the original meaning of the tag, which is indicated in the quote, was lost. As I saw, often the background with color transitions can be removed. So, in a sense, the condition works.
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Frankly this has never made sense to me either. The whole "you can cut out the background in Photoshop" thing is meant as a way of determining whether a background is simple or complex. If you can easily cut it out, then it's simple, otherwise it's complex. It shouldn't be taken literally, as in "transparent backgrounds aren't simple because they're already cut out".
Artists who take commissions often have different prices for simple versus detailed backgrounds. I look at it like that - simple background means the picture isn't a full scene with a full background, it's just a character in empty (or nearly empty) space.
On a practical level, it's very hard to tag simple background because you have to verify that it's not transparent first. This makes tag scripting difficult. It also makes automatic tagging via things like DeepDanbooru impossible, since transparent backgrounds usually get converted to white.
Yeah it never made sense to me either tbh. Not tagging full transparent backgrounds with simple background also means we can't easily find things like post #4512947, which get lumped into alpha transparency instead despite that tag being for gradient transparency.
I'd be for removing that clause and treating transparent background as any other "color". We can argue that there's no color there, but one can also argue that "transparent" is a color of pixels shown on your screen.
nonamethanks said:
Yeah it never made sense to me either tbh. Not tagging full transparent backgrounds with simple background also means we can't easily find things like post #4512947, which get lumped into alpha transparency instead despite that tag being for gradient transparency.
I'd be for removing that clause and treating transparent background as any other "color". We can argue that there's no color there, but one can also argue that "transparent" is a color of pixels shown on your screen.
Was reading through this and also thought that treating transparent as a "color" and calling it "simple" would probably work best
