Wikipedia:How to improve image quality

When we include images in Wikipedia, it is nice when they look good. When they do, an article appears more professional and is more pleasant to read. When they look amateurish, the article looks amateurish.

Here are some things that should be kept in mind when uploading images.

• Make sure the white balance is correct or fix it afterwards.
• Correct the brightness/contrast if it's needed.
• If there is excessive image noise (from a scan or low light), try using a noise removal program such as Neat Image [1].
• Select the opimal image resolution for Wikipedia. If people might need this image in hi-res, upload a better version. If the image is bigger than 100Kbytes you may need to upload it to Commons.
• Check that it's not very blurred and that there are no JPEG compression artefacts. If there are, try reducing the image size.
• Make sure the perspective is correct or fix it afterwards.
• Check the composition of the photo. Crop the image to remove useless parts of it.

You can use most image editing software to do this manually. Many programs also have facilities for semi-automatic image enhancement (Ulead PhotoImpact 10 [2] is good), so that you only need to mindlessly click on thumbnails until you find a modification that improves the quality.

If you are a newbie and can't do it, but you clearly see that the image needs improvements, upload it anyway and then ask anyone for assistance on Village Pump, Requested pictures, on this article talk page or elsewhere.