Uploaded Covers

I was wondering if there was a way to keep track of the covers we have uploaded through LibraryThing. Is this something that would easily be possible or something that would be desired by more than just me?

I've uploaded a relatively small number of covers (15 or so); however, the quality on some is less than I would like. It would be nice to easily find those covers so that I could uploaded better ones once I get a better scanner.

Also, it would be interesting to get (very optional) notices when a certain book had a new cover uploaded...or perhaps I should just get back to uploading covers so that I don't have to wait for others...

Both of those are interesting ideas. The first one is also an easy idea to implement. I'll take a look at it.

It would be also be nifty to somehow identify who uploaded a particular cover (particularly in the case of really rare or old or funky covers (and then, particularly, if you happen to share one of those unique covers)).

Douglas

"In the end, only kindness matters."

I tag books when I upload covers "image mine". When I link to an already uploaded cover "image other". And "image amazon" when I accept the default. I think I have got rid of "wrong cover shown". There are still a few "no cover shown" and "too large to scan" tags.

But I'm only responsible for 1.64% of uploaded covers.

I have uploaded covers for in the neighborhood of 500-600 of the books in my library. A third of my library is unshared, and a lot of my popular works are old paperbacks, so I do a lot of uploading. I want every book in my LT library to match the real covers. I'm mostly there.

Actually, I'd like to scan and upload every book cover in my library, even the popular or new ones--Amazon pictures are often very poor, and in general I just like it when it's my actual book.

It's too bad I haven't done tagging like you have, but I think it's a great idea! I'll have to go through and start doing that.

That's a good idea with the tags and I haven't uploaded nearly as many as rikker to make it a hassel. I still think a more "built-in" solution would be good though.

Rikker mentioned wanting to upload a cover for every book in his library. Given the (sadly) small number of books in my library I considered doing this as well. I was wondering though if this is, in general, a bad thing for LibraryThing considering the space that would be required for storage and the increased bandwidth usage. What are the pros and cons of user submitted covers?

I hope I'm not filling up more than my share of space with all my covers--that didn't occurr to when I was doing all the scanning and uploading.

Thanks to power edit, I've now tagged the covers I uploaded with cover - upload in only a few minutes. I think I got nearly all of them... take a look if you're interested. :)

I hope I'm not filling up more than my share of space with all my covers--that didn't occurr to when I was doing all the scanning and uploading.

Actually I'm very grateful to other users who scan and upload covers... they've saved me a lot of time over the past few weeks!

When I first became a member (Sept.05), there were relatively few user-scanned covers to choose from, and I ended up scanning several dozen covers. Since then, other users have joined who also own copies of some of these more unusual books, and hopefully my scans have been useful to them.

Either way, it's a great pleasure to go to Cover View and see a screenful of images, isn't it? :-)

rikker said "I hope I'm not filling up more than my share of space with all my covers". My view is, if there is an acceptable existing uploaded version of your cover use it, otherwise upload your own. Having seen quite a few amozon covers change in the last few months I am in the slow process of changing them all. I have all my covers on a CD so scanning is complete but uploading takes time.

I'm a bit pickier than that, though.. I'm often dissatisfied with the cropping/resolution/rotation of the uploaded covers! Also, I don't like ones that have a digital camera flash reflection obscuring some of the image. The same holds true for the quality of Amazon images--they're sometimes quite poor resolution and highly compressed.

So... I've ended up uploading the same cover, but what I think of as "better" version, a lot of the time. Hopefully others will like my versions, too. :)

I, too, became rather dissatisfied with Amazon's covers, and have (with one or two exceptions) scanned in my own covers for the past several months' worth of entries. I still have something like seven bookcases full of books to scan, however (very few of my older books have Amazon images ... but I've uploaded my scans there too to fix that in many cases!). which means I won't be caught up anytime soon.

The main problem with most of the images from Amazon is that they're "murky", I regurlarly punch up the brightness, white point, color saturation, and sharpness in my scanned images before re-sizing them (I typically upload a 450x300 image), which ends up with a nice clear image (even when I further reduce them to 150x100 for inclusion in my reviews).

When uploading covers, does anyone have any thoughts about file size? I have found that many of the small images are just fine ok at 50k, but I wonder if it would be a best practice to take the extra time to shoot for 200k under the assumption that the book covers will be larger in the future?

I have also found that brightening and increasing contrast does wonders, especially for old dingy clothbounds.

I believe - you'd need to experiment and check - that LT downsamples 200K images anyhow, so you need to store them off-line in anticipation of a future upgrade.

Hmm, now you've all got me thinking.
I have uploaded a bunch of cover images, but never thought about tagging them as such. Not sure I want to put image-related tags. My main objective is to have the actual cover of my book, but I really want them all to have images so I've accepted some amazon images and other user-submitted images when I didn't have my own, unless my copy has a really distinctive cover, in which case I've got it on a "to-scan" list.

It would be nice to be able to figure out which ones were actually my images now, though, so I wish I had done the "image" tags!

Dan

I upload some of my covers to capture the wrinkles, wine stains and torn covers - things that make my old, beloved books mine!

Douglas

"In the end, only kindness matters."

I wish that there was some way that LT could notify me when a new cover has been posted for a book in my library that is currently coverless.

"I upload some of my covers to capture the wrinkles, wine stains and torn covers - things that make my old, beloved books mine!"

That's funny ... as I've spent literally hours pixel-editing scans to GET RID OF just this sort of thing!

"upload some of my covers to capture the wrinkles, wine stains and torn covers - things that make my old, beloved books mine!"

"That's funny ... as I've spent literally hours pixel-editing scans to GET RID OF just this sort of thing!"

Isn't that a fantastic example of how people see things differently! I can see it both ways, but I wouldn't spend the time scanning a cover if it was already on.

I like your idea of a notification. I can do that, anyway to some extent. I will look into it.

T

How did you determine you're responsible for 1.64% of uploaded covers?
I've started going back through and adding some image-related tags, but some of the books have the "right" cover but I can't honestly remember if I had to upload it or someone else already had and I selected it.
Is there any way to determine what covers I've uploaded?

dan

total covers uploaded is on zeitgeist page (165213). number uploaded by me number of "image mine" tags in my library from my profile (2307) it's down to 1.39% and falling.

It would be nice if L.T. kept track of that ... tagging can keep track of that, if you think of doing so when you get started uploading, but I doubt that most folks have bothered.

It would be nice if we had something like

http://www.glassgiant.com/romance/

on the site.

this produces

results like This

#19
I like your idea of a notification. I can do that, anyway to some extent. I will look into it.

I'd been wondering if a notification (when a cover is uploaded) is possible.

Any update on this?

>23 SimonW11:

There's something wrong with your link. At least, I assume so, since it leads to a "non-result" search of your library for books containing "dummy".

Urgh, I though that would search tags not books for the word "dummy". Hmm I enjoyed making those as well. still search for dmmies on the tag field and you will get there.

Simon

Try This

Hi-Every time I come to my library opening page, I have to reset to cover view, the amount of books per page, and reorder it by author. Is that the way it is now, or is there a way to set these things to default?

28 > does your browser delete all cookies on exit?

I tried changing the cookie setting in my browsers. No difference.
It used to stay put...
Another thing it will not do anymore- if I pick a subcategory to view for myself or another member, I will not be able to set up how I view those books, without it throwing me back to the entire list.

>28 arthurfrayn:, 30

Arthur, we have posted about this innumerable times..

Unfortunately it has not been resolved (yet). It started happening when the sort menu was put in and I think there are changes to the whole thing in the works, but I really don't know what or when. So we continue to change to whatever we use - other than book title - for the sort and then we change to the number of covers we like best every time we open our browser.

Maybe it will get fixed one day... **big sigh**

BTW - since the change my cookie expires at the end of the session, rather than a long time in the future and there is nothing I can do to change it as I think it comes from the site - before it didn't expire at the end of the session. (Firefox) And that is why I can't keep my preferences.

quoteArthur, we have posted about this innumerable times./quote

Sorry about that- I didn't see it in the FAQ and have not become familiar enough with how to search in post archives, but I appreciate you giving me the lowdown. :D

>32 arthurfrayn: Arthur

Oh no...no need to apologise - I was just sympathising with you - though when I read it back it was a bit like that.

It IS very annoying - and you gave me another opportunity to complain; so thanks actually.

We are with you on this: is what I was trying to say. :)

Or should that be :(

Thanks- I wasn't annoyed or anything-I know that people asking the same questions again and again without scrolling can be wearying. It's just that I haven't plugged into the forum structure on this site completely, and I confess, my desire to know about these things made me post without doing the most thorough search.
So it's good to have someone respond and give me the info-it's appreciated. I didn't take it the wrong way. Thanks again.:)

Thank you for this useful tip. I'm a recent registrant and have wondered about the same issue as posted by rikker. I just updated by tags to include: "Uploaded Covers". Cheers, - kvilla