Sky Tags

sunset: The time of the day during the evening just before the night, when the sun is at or near the horizon and the sky is usually colorful with the red and orange colors.

twilight: Twilight is a time of day when the sun is low in the sky, either at dawn or dusk. Because sometimes you don't really know which it is in an illustration.

evening: The end of the day when the sun sets.

dusk: Dusk is the beginning of darkness in the evening, and occurs after twilight, when the sky generally remains blue. Use this when it's not yet night, but the sun has fallen.

Is it possible to have a better clarification of these tags? It seems logical that sunset could refer to the sun physically being seen in the sky, while twilight could just refer to the color of the sky without the sun necessarily being shown. Evening could probably be the same purpose as twilight. Is there enough of a difference between dusk and evening that would warrant separate tags?

I think it would be good to have some clarification also. Although as I'm aware, some of these tags I did edit the Japanese tags in. I know some of them are used from time to time in both tags and image captions on pixiv/seiga, and we can trust to some extent their use of it, but for anything else where we have to assert the time of day it does indeed get more difficult to distinguish.

Evening and dusk I believe are used either simultaneously or interchangeably, and twilight is for images where you can't really tell if the sun is coming up or down (although I've rarely ever used the tag). Sunset is much easier to tell, and I think evening is sometimes if not often also tagged with it.

I'm wondering about the naming convention for some of those tags, as the name of the tag can affect the user's perception of the image. For instance, there's no dawn tag... I get it, it's not that easy to tell dawn from dusk. However, the fact that they are tagged dusk will influence viewers so that they are more likely to view the image from that standpoint, even if an image has elements that could indicate a morning atmosphere.

Sunrise does exist, but it also suffers the same as the above dusk/dawn combo, as it is usually difficult to tell them apart from the image alone.

Thoughts about using more generalized tags, such as sunrise/sunset and dawn/dusk so that it doesn't split up these very similar visual items, while at the same time not influencing the viewers perception...?

According to Wikipedia:

• Sunset and sunrise are when the sun is just above the horizon.
• Dusk and dawn are when light first becomes visible or last goes out. The sun is well below the horizon.
• Twilight is the period in between dawn-to-sunrise or sunset-to-dusk. The sky is growing brighter (or darker) but the sun is still below the horizon.

In other words, the progression is dawn-twilight-sunrise, then sunset-twilight-dusk.

Therefore I would agree with sunrise/sunset for when the sun is above the horizon, but I would suggest twilight instead of dawn/dusk for when it's below. Under these definitions, dusk, dawn, and twilight are all pretty much the same thing: the sun is below the horizon. But it's even harder to tell whether it's morning or night when the sun isn't visible, therefore I think they should all just be grouped together as twilight.

evazion said:

Therefore I would agree with sunrise/sunset for when the sun is above the horizon, but I would suggest twilight instead of dawn/dusk for when it's below. Under these definitions, dusk, dawn, and twilight are all pretty much the same thing: the sun is below the horizon. But it's even harder to tell whether it's morning or night when the sun isn't visible, therefore I think they should all just be grouped together as twilight.

I really like this. I've used twilight when I can't decide if it's sunrise or sunset, and I've always felt bad about that. I didn't know the distinction about above/below the horizon, but that definitely makes a clear and useful tag, so I'm in favor of starting to use it that way. Also, since you can't tell between sunset and sunrise at least half the time, having them as separate tags is harmful to searchability and I think I'm in favor of combining them as well. Though I'd rather call it sunset/sunrise instead of the reverse, as sunset is more popular so more likely to be typed, and somehow it sounds better to me in that order anyway.

☆♪ said:

Though I'd rather call it sunset/sunrise instead of the reverse, as sunset is more popular so more likely to be typed, and somehow it sounds better to me in that order anyway.

Regardless of what it eventually gets called, we can always alias sunset and sunrise to it, so that it doesn't matter what people try to search for.

As for myself, I have no preference, although sunrise/sunset is a bit more logical as that is the order they occur in a day.

BrokenEagle98 said:

Regardless of what it eventually gets called, we can always alias sunset and sunrise to it, so that it doesn't matter what people try to search for.

As for myself, I have no preference, although sunrise/sunset is a bit more logical as that is the order they occur in a day.

Yeah, I guess the typing is a non-issue. But it still matters that it reads naturally in the tag list. Honestly I'd prefer a single term that describes them both to using a slash at all, but I can't think of such a term other than twilight, which apparently isn't even quite correct and is now maybe getting a distinct meaning as a tag as well.

Side note: Perhaps I'm being overly philosophical here, but sunrise is only before sunset if your point of reference is the middle of the day. It makes just as much sense to look at night as the point between the two, in which case sunset is first. You can't really assign them an order. Not that I have really strong feelings about it either, just kind of wanted to say that. :)

As long as we're talking about merging sunrise with sunset, should we consider doing the same for morning and evening? Without helpful context like characters waking up or having coffee, it's hard to tell what time of day is being portrayed. A lot of the posts with one tag or the other look like they could go either way, to be honest.

As we have two actually separate visuals that impact the image differently, I think trying to merge sunset and sunrise together is actually going in the wrong direction. In my opinion it'd be better to hash out better divisions between the two, than try and merge them together and lose possible vocabulary to describe the two different visuals.

Sunset: When the sky and/or horizon is tinted orange or red, and the sun is at or near the horizon when present. Examples: post #364299, post #37706, post #94909

Sunrise: When the horizon is white, gold, or orange tinted and/or the sun is at or near the horizon while the sky is still blue or purple. post #2174363, post #2197322, post #160829.

Definitions like these would also effectively remove the necessity of a twilight tag, since from a visual difference it's only the inclusion or exclusion of the sun tag.