I notice that the QL screenshots are only allowed in 512x256 (4 color) or 256x256 (8 color) pixel size.

I find this is not so good for showing QL images, since the displayed images were stretched by the video chip to fit a normal (12") 4:3 CRT, making the pixels rectangular in shape.

On this site there are some unstretched images in 8-color that looks compressed due to this effect, from games played on a square board like chess & scrabble eg:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/sinclair-ql/computer-scrabble/screenshots/gameShotId,580950/

This is not shown here as a square image, even though it has 256x256 pixels on the QL. (upscaled to 512x512 at mobygames, but with the same effect)

Similarly a 4-color screen I captured for QL flight has a circular instrument, which gets compressed to a flat ellipse if I use the captured 512x256 resolution directly.

If an emulator capturing these screens as a plain square pixels, the images will always look distorted, and need re-scaling to be seen as they are/were played.

Some, e.g. QemuLator can do this rescaling for a fullscreen view, but it is 1024x768, so it is a bit on the large side, while still using the correct scale. (The windowed capture is still off)

The actual scale to use should for 256x256 (8col) images be to *reduce* the height to 0.75% and for 512x256 (4col) images to *increase* the height to 150% to have the picture fit a 4:3 CRT. (of course I might have miscalculated)

This makes the displayed image (width x height) 256x192 pixels for 8color screens, and 512x384 pixels for 4color screens, which works with the un-stretched pixels we see on our monitors today.

Whether this should be done prior to upload, or as a display scaling function by mobygames, I cannot say, but I think it would look much improved to the oddly squeezed images displayed now. (not that there are many screenshot uploads yet)

So what is the consensus here? Squeezed or re-scaled images?

Guys? I asked him to post about it here, I'm sure someone knows a lot more about these, because otherwise they'll just get stuck in the queue. Servo, Iggy?

That game should run in 512x256, if you scale the screen down via a nearest neighbor method the texts for example become unreadable, which they wouldn't if 256x256 would be the actual res.

Downscaling a 256x256 image to 256x192 is to my knowledge not allowed, by the same logic you could do the same with an Snes 256x224 shot.

I hesitate to speak of a general consensus regarding anything though, partly because approver statements keep surprising me.

If I recall correctly similar issues with other systems, we use "pixel perfect" screenshots even if it means wrong aspect ratio in our screenshot gallery. It's the lesser evil.

Only simple doubling of width/height is allowed, but it's rarely the case (life would be too easy). Otherwise the often 8-bit images would have to be converted to full color in order to properly use smooth stretching. Nearest neighbour scaling would indeed make text look horrible.

Well, whenever an acceptable scaling solution is available, I guess the original will be useful anyway. I just feel that the displayed image need not be the same as the source.

It would be nice if it were possible to specify what aspect ratio a platform's display was (4:3, 16:9, 1:1, whatever) and have pixel-accurate images on the server, automatically stretched to the proper aspect ratio. This honestly sounds like the sort of thing a browser plugin could do, since it's doubtful it would ever be implemented on the site itself.