Is it allowed to upscale, and then post, existing art on this website, using a neural network upscaler that genuinely improves detail, namely Waifu2x?

website: http://waifu2x.udp.jp/

demonstration: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nagadomi/waifu2x/master/images/slide.png

Usually from what I've seen it's a no, but there are rare exceptions, mainly involving pixel artwork.

Short answer: no.

No, no and no. There are even some checks in place to prevent this specific scaling tool because we don't want upscales.

Counterquestion:
Why can't you just do this yourself when you need it?
Why would we need to host something that you can create in couple seconds and risk original file (which you cannot recreate from waifu2x upscale) being accidentally deleted?

Mairo said:
Counterquestion:
Why can't you just do this yourself when you need it?
Why would we need to host something that you can create in couple seconds and risk original file (which you cannot recreate from waifu2x upscale) being accidentally deleted?

I just think it would be nice to have the option, but I do see your point about it.

Henry_VIII said:
I just think it would be nice to have the option, but I do see your point about it.

But then everybody's deleted post count would skyrocket as somebody else makes an even higher resolution image. Would you like your upload limit to be -1000?

If there's really a demand for it, every post could have links to the most popular image scaling websites.
It would work like the reverse image searches under "Related Posts".

But there probably isn't enough demand, and it might encourage people to make a "better" version and upload it to e621.

Munkelzahn said:
But there probably isn't enough demand, and it might encourage people to make a "better" version and upload it to e621.

Considering how focused people tend to get about upvotes and downvotes? yeaaah..

Furrin_Gok said:
But then everybody's deleted post count would skyrocket as somebody else makes an even higher resolution image.

waifu2x.udp.jp said:

Limits: Size: 5MB, Noise Reduction: 3000x3000px, Upscaling: 1500x1500px

Upscaling factor: * None *1.6x *2x

These limits prevent that kind of infinite regression (unless you meant 'each of your posts is replaced roughly once with an upscaled version')

If you self-host https://github.com/nagadomi/waifu2x , you can get around that, but

• Obviously, just having the technical chops to self-host filters out a good chunk of people
• Requires NVidia GPU
• It will take a lot longer as resolution increases (the limits are there to keep run-time practical)

savageorange said:
These limits prevent that kind of infinite regression (unless you meant 'each of your posts is replaced roughly once with an upscaled version')

If you self-host https://github.com/nagadomi/waifu2x , you can get around that, but

• Obviously, just having the technical chops to self-host filters out a good chunk of people
• Requires NVidia GPU
• It will take a lot longer as resolution increases (the limits are there to keep run-time practical)

But it wouldn't be impossible for users to try and aim higher and higher until it's e621 dimension limits that are hit, just that those unaware of anything other than that one particular site would be doing only things according to that sites limitations.

And I'm pretty sure they meant that the upscaled version you post is most likely getting replaced by another upscaled post which is upscaled even better. On top of just scaling, there is also difference in denoising as well as what kind of alghorithm you are using, you could also teach the alghorithm manually which could technically end up with better results with some specific material as regular waifu2x is optimized for more japanese artwork and photos only, where most artwork we host is more western.

So it still comes down to being reduntant, unhelpful and extremely spammy for us to host upscales even if they did not replace originals on top of creating more work for staff.

Upscale every image to the limit
???
profit

Anyone who knowingly uploads upscales will be given a record.

DiceLovesBeingBlown said:
Usually from what I've seen it's a no, but there are rare exceptions, mainly involving pixel artwork.

I found some pixel artwork at post:
https://e621.net/post/show/1586587/2018-animated-anthro-anus-bauser-bdsm-bent_over-bl
Would this represent an acceptable circumstance to upscale pixel art?

Henry_VIII said:
I found some pixel artwork at post:
https://e621.net/post/show/1586587/2018-animated-anthro-anus-bauser-bdsm-bent_over-bl
Would this represent an acceptable circumstance to upscale pixel art?

No, because that pixel art falls above the image limit, minimum of 200 x 200 for a post. It's over 300 x 300.

The pixel art thing is if the base image is smaller than 200 x 200. I think anyways... I could be wrong on this rule.

Henry_VIII said:
I found some pixel artwork at post:
https://e621.net/post/show/1586587/2018-animated-anthro-anus-bauser-bdsm-bent_over-bl
Would this represent an acceptable circumstance to upscale pixel art?

If the image in question is small (say, smaller than an old cellphone's screen - 160x160) resizing, not upscaling, would be beneficial here as a courtesy

But don't take my comment as final say, since I don't really do approvals *shrug*

Xch3l said:
If the image in question is small (say, smaller than an old cellphone's screen - 160x160) resizing, not upscaling, would be beneficial here as a courtesy

But don't take my comment as final say, since I don't really do approvals *shrug*

by "upscaling, I meant resize using nearest neighbor doubling that leads to perfectly preserved pixels. the original post is 328x328, so lowish, but not that low. would tripling be a good idea so it would be about 1000x1000?

Henry_VIII said:
by "upscaling, I meant resize using nearest neighbor doubling that leads to perfectly preserved pixels. the original post is 328x328, so lowish, but not that low. would tripling be a good idea so it would be about 1000x1000?

The idea is if it's under the minimum limit, you do a pixel perfect resize, only multiplying it by the lowest required integer to get it above the minimum limit. 328x328 is already over that limit, so any further is just upscaling.

Furrin_Gok said:
The idea is if it's under the minimum limit, you do a pixel perfect resize, only multiplying it by the lowest required integer to get it above the minimum limit. 328x328 is already over that limit, so any further is just upscaling.

what is the official maximum? someting like 320x240 or therabouts would make sense. To be fair, the pixels were already resized to a significant extent so in retrospect his image was a poor candidate for resizing. However, DOS style pixelart at 320x200 or SNES style at 256x224 would look rather tiny without any resizing. So it's largely subjective then, with the 160x160 rule being an absolute minimum for pictures, in which everything bellow that must be resized?

Henry_VIII said:
what is the official maximum? someting like 320x240 or therabouts would make sense. To be fair, the pixels were already resized to a significant extent so in retrospect his image was a poor candidate for resizing. However, DOS style pixelart at 320x200 or SNES style at 256x224 would look rather tiny without any resizing. So it's largely subjective then, with the 160x160 rule being an absolute minimum for pictures, in which everything bellow that must be resized?

According to the Uploading Guidelines (which you should give a read, it tells you some stuff that's bad to upload):

Small images: Anything below 200px in either direction is likely to get deleted

So, if either dimension is below 200px, you multiply it. Shouldn't need to increase anything by more than x3, as it wouldn't have enough detail to look good at that point. I rather doubt you'd have good detail even at x3 but I'm being generous on that one.

Henry_VIII said:
what is the official maximum? someting like 320x240 or therabouts would make sense. To be fair, the pixels were already resized to a significant extent so in retrospect his image was a poor candidate for resizing. However, DOS style pixelart at 320x200 or SNES style at 256x224 would look rather tiny without any resizing. So it's largely subjective then, with the 160x160 rule being an absolute minimum for pictures, in which everything bellow that must be resized?

Official minimum is 200px so full-screen SNES is acceptable as it goes above that limit. I just used 160x160 as an example

For reference, official max is uh, 15000px longest side, iirc

I'm so glad that I made wiki page for upscale, because even if the general stance is that they aren't accepted, yes, they can be used in pixel art if used properly (nearest-neighbor/no-filter) and there are grandfathered posts and edits that has been approved that wouldn't be anymore. This is just one of those cases that's it's far easier to say "no upscales" and refer to guidelines than to start listing what's acceptable and what's not.

Would need new example for bilinear and generally someone with english knowledge to go trough it that there's no condridictions I sometimes have in my text because non-native speaker.

Xch3l said:
If the image in question is small (say, smaller than an old cellphone's screen - 160x160) resizing, not upscaling, would be beneficial here as a courtesy

But don't take my comment as final say, since I don't really do approvals *shrug*

Upscaling is resizing, resizing can be upscaling. We do also consider downscaling and cropping - another forms of resizing - not ideal and deleting content as inferior if original shows up.

Feels bit weird saying these things to admin tho, but I guess everyone has their own area to deal with here.

Henry_VIII said:
what is the official maximum? someting like 320x240 or therabouts would make sense. To be fair, the pixels were already resized to a significant extent so in retrospect his image was a poor candidate for resizing. However, DOS style pixelart at 320x200 or SNES style at 256x224 would look rather tiny without any resizing. So it's largely subjective then, with the 160x160 rule being an absolute minimum for pictures, in which everything bellow that must be resized?

There's no maximum right now, this is one of those things that simply use common sense. 200px limit is there for several reasons, main ones being that content we host is actually viewable for regular users and that nobody starts uploading peoples FA avatars and such.

Pretty much what Furrin Gok said above, use lowest integer to make the content viewable with modern monitors and hardware, can be above the hard rule limit but not 100 times to make it reduntant, really common to see is 2-4x upscale. Even mobile phones these days have 1080p panels, so user zooming to under 200px content will look blurry to them. If original resolution is something like 16x16, it doesn't matter if you upscale it to go above the limit, that starts to be so small that there's no point keeping it and anyone could trial and error to make it look decent (post #1512384).

I personally prefer what casetermk does even if they don't upload here personally, just keep the original resolution on the left, then put up upscaled version on the right. This way users can see how amazing it actually looks but can still see the whole thing without squinting their eyes.
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