Preserve Image Aspect Ratio

[michaelneverwins]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. When an image with an aspect ratio other than 2:3 is added to Cartridges, the image is stretched to 2:3 when it is resized to 200x300. Whether this is a "problem" is subjective; some may prefer stretching over the alternatives (padding and cropping) because it leaves no empty space and none of the image is lost. However, in my opinion, cropping sometimes looks right (if the image is close enough to 2:3 that nothing of value is removed) while stretching never looks right.

Describe the solution you'd like There could be an option to disable image stretching, i.e. to crop images to 2:3 before resizing so that images are not stretched to the 2:3 aspect ratio. Stretching can remain enabled by default just to preserve the current behavior for users who don't want to change it.

Describe alternatives you've considered

• Rather than adding an option, image stretching could just be disabled unconditionally.
• Images could also be padded to 2:3, similar to how Steam generates 600x900 images for games that only have the old 460x215 images, but in my own opinion, this never looks good.
• If the Cartridges team does not want to change anything, then the obvious workaround is to crop images in GIMP before adding them to Cartridges, but of course this is not ideal.

Additional context This issue is probably applicable only to manually added images. SteamGridDB always tends to have 600x900 images, and Steam provides images in the expected aspect ratio as well (either 600x900 or 300x450 in my experience). I don't know about other image sources.

[kra-mo]

Images are stretched only before a certain threshold. If their aspect ratio differs significantly, they are padded.

Cropping does not work, it could remove important parts of the image. We cannot know whether it would.

[kra-mo]

https://github.com/kra-mo/cartridges/blob/38d47dae339d508cef6ae68d776089adce05d77e/src/store/managers/cover_manager.py#L104

[michaelneverwins]

Is that code used when images are added manually (as opposed to being imported automatically from Steam, SteamGridDB, etc.)? If so, I would argue that the threshold needs adjustment, because Cartridges stretches this 4:1 (800x200) image to 2:3.

Not that I would try to use a 4:1 image as a cover, but it definitely does differ significantly from 2:3.

[michaelneverwins]

Ditto for 1:4 image (200x800).

[michaelneverwins]

As for whether cropping is a good idea, I agree that it won't always look right. That's why I suggested making it optional, but of course I understand the desire not to add options which are reasonably likely to do bad things. I would still argue that stretching never looks quite right, but slight stretching is sometimes undetectable at a glance, so stretching only to a certain threshold and padding beyond that threshold isn't a bad idea. (Padding isn't my favorite solution, but I'll backpedal a bit on the "[padding] never looks good" comment above. I was thinking specifically of the way Steam does it, especially the way it's off-center.) The problem is that I didn't know this feature existed in Cartridges because it doesn't appear to be working for cover images I add manually. I don't know whether this is a bug (i.e. it should work for manually added images but doesn't) or a missing feature (i.e. it was implemented only for images imported automatically and doing it for manual images is new scope). But I did confirm that Cartridges ridiculously stretches images before opening this issue.

[kra-mo]

That's why I suggested making it optional

The problem is that, as I said, this is a per-cover thing. Making it a global option does not work here.

The padding only happens for automatically added games, so that should probably be changed.

[GeoffreyCoulaud]

👀

[michaelneverwins]

kra-mo closed this as completed in https://github.com/kra-mo/cartridges/commit/c2d671273ae47f5dd51cc25e33bdb56817e681cf

That was quick. Just to test my ridiculous pepper images again, I've confirmed that manually added wide images are now padded. :+1:

I see that taller-than-2:3 images always being considered "stretchable" is the intended behavior: https://github.com/kra-mo/cartridges/blob/c2d671273ae47f5dd51cc25e33bdb56817e681cf/src/store/managers/cover_manager.py#L104-L107 So the absurdly tall image not being padded is no surprise.