Last modified: 2009-12-30 17:54:37 UTC
The image description page for [[Image:Map of Colorado highlighting Huerfano County.png]], for example, shows the original 6711x4876 image, instead of a thumbnail. This gobbles bandwidth, and makes image description pages completely unusable for those of use with limited computer memory.
[Wikitech-l] Images greater than 12.5 megapixels can't be thumbnailed http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-October/032030.html
Ah, thanks! I think that image description pages should still use the old thumbnail link, even if the thumbnail won't get generated. If the thumbnail already exists, then the page will display fine. And even if it doesn't, the user can always click on the "download high resolution" link, but won't be forced to download the huge image. Note that this is what categories do, for example http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Colorado_county_locator_maps
Perhaps a special text link as a placeholder could be used, as in "This is a very large image which can't be thumbnailed. Click here to view the full-size version". But is the 12.5 megapixel thing really the problem here? By the looks of it, these are SVGs, and should be thumbnailable really easily - the "S" stands for "Scalable", after all. Oh, wait, you replaced them since reporting this bug. Any chance of finding another example so we can see the behaviour in action?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Colorado_national_forest_maps is another example, which should stick around for at least a week or so (though eventually I'll be converting those to SVG, too). Text as placeholder sounds like a good idea.
Another problem with the current behavior is that, when a thumbnail of a large image is used in an article, it appears as a red link. So people come along and remove the "deleted" image. See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arapaho_National_Forest&diff=26069808&oldid=25698758 for example. A blue link to the image description page would be much more useful.
Not a critical issue, bumping to minor
The original problem (large PNGs causing ImageMagick to eat up too much RAM) can be fixed with a few command-line options: http://studio.imagemagick.org/pipermail/magick-developers/2002-December/001206.html I'll try to test this when I get a chance, to see if it really works as advertised. It would be nice if the size restriction could simply be lifted, since this is the easiest solution to the related problems.
Still broken. Did you try out the parameters Bill Clark?
AFAIK this doesn't happen any more; if the picture is too big, the thumbnail is replaced by an error message: "Error creating thumbnail: Invalid thumbnail parameters or image file with more than 12.5 million pixels" And there's an open bug about this specific issue ( bug 9497 ).
