I've been wondering whether there's a point to the 'shading' tag for posts, considering that it's a very common technique and the tag is rather vague. The number of posts which use this tag are also low, rendering it less-than-stellar as a sole search term.

Your thoughts? Would it be worth removing or aliasing to invalid_tag?

Strongbird said:
I've been wondering whether there's a point to the 'shading' tag for posts, considering that it's a very common technique and the tag is rather vague. The number of posts which use this tag are also low, rendering it less-than-stellar as a sole search term.

Your thoughts? Would it be worth removing or aliasing to invalid_tag?

As a basic art technique that is seen in most professional images on this website, I vote to invalidate it.

I agree with GM, invalidate it.

The opposite tag might be more valid -- flat_shading -- but it's currently only used on 3 posts. post #535721 and post #155972 are correctly tagged with it, post #36260 is incorrectly tagged with it.

(post #36260 is actually cel_shading. cel_shading has less than 320 posts and is almost certainly drastically undertagged. We might want to consider invalidating that too (but it's not quite as clear cut a case as shading))

Finally, there is a difference between shading and value-structure of a picture overall. carrot_(artist) is an example of an artist who is attentive to broad value structure and its contribution to making the picture read. By contrast lamiaaaa tends to mostly disregard or be very conservative with overall value structure, adding only some (light) shading. I don't know if we have tags to express that distinction, but I thought they needed to be mentioned in a discussion of shading.