Transform picture (crop/rotate/etc) within the app

[ujjwalagrawal17]

The app should have image editing features.

Desirable features:

• Crop (especially lossless resize à la jpegtran)
• Rotate (90, 180, 270 degrees)
• Modify EXIF
• Blur faces/number plates/etc for privacy reasons (see Editor to correctly blur faces and vehicle plate numbers #190)

Undesirable features:

• Color filters such as Sajuno/Manglow/Palacia/Anax/etc (original colors are better)
• Flip horizontally/vertically (misleading)
• Black and white, grayscale, sepia, etc (loss of information)
• Rescale, for instance 3000x2000 to 300x200 or vice versa (original size is the best)
• Stickers
• Pencil, text

Debated:

• White balance
• Brightness
• HDR (sounds difficult to implement though)

[maskaravivek]

I have been always thinking of having editing options in the app. I couldn't find image editing library that we can simply plug in the app. Am not sure how much effort we can put to write the whole editing feature by ourselves.

@nicolas-raoul would definitely have some insights on this.

[tanvidadu]

javacv library can be used for this purpose. Though I am not sure the effort needed to write the whole editing feature using this library.

[knight-shade]

DS photo editor SDK seems to be a good option. Or do we want to develop from scratch?

Update
@maskaravivek Link: https://www.dsphotoeditor.com/

[maskaravivek]

Can you include a link for it.

[misaochan]

An additional question for @nicolas-raoul ,@whym , or anyone else familiar with Commons policies - do we WANT to encourage people to edit their photos before they put them up on Commons?

Definitely no stickers or 'write' options though, please. ;)

[whym]

I believe the recommended way to do it is to have both - upload the unedited version first and then upload the edited (cropped, whitebalanced, etc) version, too, either as a separate file or by overwriting. This will allow someone else with a better editing skill to re-do the editing later, and until then the file remains as the version the uploader want it to be.

Not sure if there is a clearly spelled out policy about it, but the closest one I can find is https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Overwriting_existing_files#Unedited_versions .

I don't think uploading the original is strictly required, and in practice, lots of people upload edited versions only, though.

[97balakrishnan]

Yeah i agree with @whym . Even if we provide editing options in-app , I don't think that features like filters,special effects and stickers will be necessary for this app. The basic enhancements/adjustments such as brighgtness,contrast,sharpness are enough and Cropping should be given the first priority.

[nicolas-raoul]

We all seem to agree that only a subset of operations are necessary, and that some operations are undesirable, so I added them to the body of the issue, anyone feel free to modify or ask to modify.

Upload the original + overwrite with the edited version sounds like a good approach, to avoid multiplication of similar files while allowing a more skilled editor to edit the picture better later (the sad reality is that many pictures with poor white balance are used on many articles, and there are not enough Wikigraphists, so uploading only the original is not very pragmatic either).

Pros of implementing our own edition features:

• We implement operations the safe way, for instance we can limit how much brightness gets added.
• We don't offer undesirable features such as sepia, so users won't be tempted.

Cons:

• Takes time to implement and maintain.
• Bigger APK.

DS photo editor SDK can not be used as it is not open source.

[97balakrishnan]

Instead of overwriting, I think that the Auto Adjust feature if available can be automatically applied if someone uploads an image.(Which automatically adjusts brightness,contrast etc).
That's also a good option to be considered

[nicolas-raoul]

@97balakrishnan Would you have a link to this "Auto Adjust" feature? Or is this something that you propose to create in Wikimedia Commons?

[97balakrishnan]

I suggest we can use SDKs to automatically adjust the pic before it gets uploaded to Wikimedia Commons without the intervention of the user. Something like this.
https://imagizer.com/docs#auto-fix

[Jatin0312]

I think for now adding just crop image options would work out well. Since cropping image is an essential edit image feature in any media related application.