Topic: Users uploading JPG files as PNG

I'm going through and cleaning up duplicates in my collection, and I'm getting a decent amount of duplicates from e621 that are pixel-for-pixel identical images, just stored as a PNG instead of JPG, so the filesize is just 5x bigger for no reason. I don't know why they're doing this, exactly. My best bet is for the massive filesize boost + the thought that a PNG is better inherently?

So I suppose why I'm posting here is that I'm unsure what to do. In the past, I've simply uploaded the original JPG and flagged the PNG re-encode. However, I've recently come across an account with over 400 approved uploads, most of which are these PNG-ified JPEGs.

They are also literally the only person uploading art from one particular artist (there's 5 images from other uploaders, and 100% of the user's uploads are for that artist. so they make up 98.8% of the artist's uploads). So replacing all of these uploads would effectively ban them from uploading ever again (understandable, but upsetting given how much work they've put into the site, and seemingly care? I had this happen to me before. Tumblr had the highest quality at the time, years later uploads were made that were higher quality, I suddenly had a negative base upload score.)

There's also the fact of just I really don't want to manually upload 400 images just to end up with images that are visually identical, and only offer the benefits of being much smaller, and having true ICC profiles.

So I guess I'm kinda looking for advice on how to approach this. Ideally, I'd like just a slap-on-the-wrist of the users that are genuinely trying and just misguided, and continuing to allow them to upload. But I think it would also be best to somehow mass-replace their uploads with the JPG versions that they effectively are.

You should report the user. Uploading JPGs converted to PNG is not okay. Also you do not need to worry about what kind of punishment is appropriate for the user, because that is something that is left up to the staff.

himofangels said:
I'm going through and cleaning up duplicates in my collection, and I'm getting a decent amount of duplicates from e621 that are pixel-for-pixel identical images, just stored as a PNG instead of JPG, so the filesize is just 5x bigger for no reason. I don't know why they're doing this, exactly. My best bet is for the massive filesize boost + the thought that a PNG is better inherently?

PNGs tend to be larger in file size and inherently better for storing images in their original quality while JPG/JPEGs tend to be much smaller in file size and inherently worse at storage since it lossily compresses images.

However, that does not excuse users from artificially "improving" posts by converting an originally JPG image into an overbloated PNG since that will not improve anything in terms of quality.
Users caught doing this will get slapped for Posting Abuse.

So I suppose why I'm posting here is that I'm unsure what to do. In the past, I've simply uploaded the original JPG and flagged the PNG re-encode. However, I've recently come across an account with over 400 approved uploads, most of which are these PNG-ified JPEGs.

They are also literally the only person uploading art from one particular artist (there's 5 images from other uploaders, and 100% of the user's uploads are for that artist. so they make up 98.8% of the artist's uploads). So replacing all of these uploads would effectively ban them from uploading ever again (understandable, but upsetting given how much work they've put into the site, and seemingly care? I had this happen to me before. Tumblr had the highest quality at the time, years later uploads were made that were higher quality, I suddenly had a negative base upload score.)

There's also the fact of just I really don't want to manually upload 400 images just to end up with images that are visually identical, and only offer the benefits of being much smaller, and having true ICC profiles.

So I guess I'm kinda looking for advice on how to approach this. Ideally, I'd like just a slap-on-the-wrist of the users that are genuinely trying and just misguided, and continuing to allow them to upload. But I think it would also be best to somehow mass-replace their uploads with the JPG versions that they effectively are.

Don't try to manually upload all of the images so you can replace the ones currently posted here. This needs to be reported to an admin, so that they can deal with it appropriately.

However, you need to have substantial evidence that they are artificially inflating uploads before you report them for Posting Abuse.
This includes finding out who they are (e.g., if they are verified as the artist themselves, who are simply posting the original images), comparing the images they posted vs. what is available on the source (e.g., visually checking between the two, consider the limitations certain sources have), etc.

Disclaimer: I don't speak for the whole mod team & I'm drawing my opinions from the most charitable reading of the limited facts presented; your mileage may vary.

himofangels said:
So I guess I'm kinda looking for advice on how to approach this. Ideally, I'd like just a slap-on-the-wrist of the users that are genuinely trying and just misguided, and continuing to allow them to upload.

Staff members have discretion for how they handle these things, but I'm pretty confident that, unless they've already been warned about this, none of us are gonna just ban them (let alone permaban them).

himofangels said:
So replacing all of these uploads would effectively ban them from uploading ever again...

We can manually adjust upload restrictions; we'd likely talk to them about why they were doing it prior, & depending on their answer decide whether to fully or partially restore their upload limit. Also, we don't have a mechanism to auto-replace their posts, so it'd likely be gradual anyways. They'd come to us & talk about what happened prior, & we'd act accordingly. This isn't set in stone, is what I'm getting at; we can override the system-defined rule if the situation contextually calls for it. As it says on the upload limit page:

Note that if too many of your posts are deleted, your upload limit may become negative.
If that happens, you may contact [email protected] to have it reviewed and corrected.

himofangels said:
I had this happen to me before. Tumblr had the highest quality at the time, years later uploads were made that were higher quality, I suddenly had a negative base upload score.

You can also talk to us about that (though I make no promises).

thegreatwolfgang said:
However, you need to have substantial evidence that they are artificially inflating uploads before you report them for Posting Abuse.
This includes finding out who they are (e.g., if they are verified as the artist themselves, who are simply posting the original images), comparing the images they posted vs. what is available on the source (e.g., visually checking between the two, consider the limitations certain sources have), etc.

I've verified about 90 posts are pixel-for-pixel identical photos as the twitter uploads, just encoded as a PNG (thankfully, my image organization software, Hydrus, automatically catches this stuff when doing duplicate searches. So it wasn't really much work at all). It would be really weird for the original artist to be uploading pictures that were saved as JPG then re-encoding them as PNG? But that's also assuming twitter didn't recompress them, introducing different artifacts.

aacafah said:
Staff members have discretion for how they handle these things, but I'm pretty confident that, unless they've already been warned about this, none of us are gonna just ban them (let alone permaban them).

Yeah, It's a lot of stuff, but I don't see any flags on their account or anything, so they're probably completely under the radar.

aacafah said:
You can also talk to us about that (though I make no promises).

Don't worry, I already got mine fixed a while back (I emailed and it got lost somewhere, but then I was just chatting with an admin one day and brought it up, and they gave me a boost so I could upload again.)

himofangels said:
I've verified about 90 posts are pixel-for-pixel identical photos as the twitter uploads, just encoded as a PNG (thankfully, my image organization software, Hydrus, automatically catches this stuff when doing duplicate searches. So it wasn't really much work at all). It would be really weird for the original artist to be uploading pictures that were saved as JPG then re-encoding them as PNG? But that's also assuming twitter didn't recompress them, introducing different artifacts.

Twitter does re-encode uploaded PNGs into JPGs. However, that would typically accompany dramatic drops in quality when comparing between the two.

If what you say is true, then just report the user in suspicion of Posting Abuse and present your evidence.