Help:Product Images

Overview

Having product images helps users identify their products.

Additional images can be displayed in the description area using standard wiki formatting.

Also, see the product user manuals guidelines when attaching manuals or other documents to a product.

Guidelines

When creating new products, or editing existing products, such as decoders and boosters, upload your own images. For the primary product image, make sure that:

Product must be unpackaged.
The image is clear and high quality.
Use a white background or other solid light-colored background
- If unable, use a background with as few distractions as possible. This will help eliminate confusion about what product is being displayed.
The product name is visible if it's on the product.
If feasible, include product accessories.
If feasible, include the ends of wires. This allows users to help identify any plugs or wire coloring.
- This is especially helpful for decoders where sometimes the only variation is the plug size or style.
The image size should be at least 800x800 in size with a maximum of 2048x2048.

File standards

DCCWiki accepts many formats. However, here is the order of preference for product images:

webp - Newer compression format that compresses better with less visual loss
jpeg - Use around '85' to '90' for the compression setting. This allows good detail without being excessively large.
png - Lossless image maintains quality for fine details, but image storage size can be excessive and could lead to over whelming the DCCWiki servers.

Naming Standards

As the images can be used in other parts of the wiki, naming an image property is important. This helps our search engine, as well as external engines, to find these images.

File name format: [Manufacturer Name] [Item type] [Model Name] product-image.webp

An example filename could be: Digitrax decoder 10231-01 product-image.webp

File Type:
Manufacturer Name = Digitrax
Product Type = decoder
- Acceptable names:
  - Booster
  - Command-station
  - Decoder
  - Starter-set
  - Throttle
  - Other 1-2 word descriptions, with a dash '-' between the words.
Model Name/Part Number = 10231-01
product-image - Helps others to know from looking at the filename alone to know what this is an image of.

Description Box

In the description box, provide any details about the image. This include the image source, who took the image, etc. At the bottom of the description box, add ''{{Product user manuals}}''. This helps our system catalog the image property and display other details about the image to other when viewing the image details.

If the product doesn't exist yet in the wiki, no need to link to the product yet. You can come back after the product page is created and link it later.

Here is an example description text that links to the manufacturer and the product page:

Product image for a [[Lenz]] decoder [[10231-1]]. File obtained from the manufacturer's website.

{{Decoder image file}}

Note: Be sure to include {{Decoder image file}} to help with displaying the proper information about this file and for categorization.

Uploading a file

Use the upload file tool.

Copyright product removal requests

For companies wishing to have items removed, please edit any existing product pages with the offending content. Additionally, a copyright holder may request to have any files removed by opening a support ticket and providing the URL to the file.

Prohibited Manufacturers

DCCWiki was created in 2005. There have never been any companies (manufacturers or vendors) that have requested any content removals. This section will be updated if this action has ever occurred.