Topic: [Feature] Tagging by Software

I'm skeptical, principally because you have shown examples of software that *are* relatively distinct, but there are many others that aren't distinct.

Basically all 2d paint programs cannot be reliably distinguished. Like, we can tell the difference between Paint and Photoshop, probably ;) But we can't tell the difference between MyPaint and Photoshop, GIMP and Photoshop, SAI and MyPaint, etc. This is because 99% of the difference in appearance comes from *how* the artist uses the software, not *what* the software specifically is. So tagging 2d software would definitely require off-site information (as opposed to 3d software, which might *sometimes require* offsite verification).

Even distinguishing one 3d program from another is fuzzy -- you don't "identify blender" so much as "determine it doesn't look like SFM or Daz3d" (In which case it could still be Maya or some more obscure modelling program. And a modeller like Blender can be hooked up to different renderers (eg. Yafray), the choice of renderer creates further subdivisions within the area of 'image feel')

One way of resolving that -- which I'm not happy with, but I am slightly more happy with than your solution -- is to extract program information from the image metadata. That is as close as possible to TWYS -- like resolution tags, it uses information that is definitively indicated by the image, even if you can't directly see it.
The downside of that is that it would be the artist's responsibility to ensure their images are correctly marked. Some programs do this automatically, some don't, so some manual intervention might be required. If the artist didn't include the information in-file, we wouldn't get to add it.

Updated by anonymous