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A fact from Menggu Ziyun appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 7 February 2011 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
At the moment we have a very dark grainy image and a (not better) version with higher contrast. If anyone is a wizard at image clean-up, perhaps they would like to have a go at replacing the alternative with a cleaner version, preferably in time for the pending DYK? Fæ (talk) 21:05, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the original image is far from ideal. I looked long and hard at the alternative version that you kindly prepared, but I thought that although it is brighter, the characters seem to have lost some clarity and are less easy to distinguish, so in the end I decided that the new image was not an improvement. I think it will be difficult to get a good image from the (poor quality) source, but if you can get an improved image that would be great -- perhaps try again with not quite so high contrast. BabelStone (talk) 21:21, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I did try a couple of different things, but as you say it's a tricky one (even a Fourier transform would need special tweaking, beyond my abilities) and I didn't want to 'artificially' tidy up the background by hand. Is there any opportunity to ask for a recent official image to be released (I'm assuming that this image came from a published article from something like T'oung Pao and there may be no other available)? Fæ (talk) 21:42, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It actually comes from a 1959 Chinese book; I have a different page from a 1987 book which is possibly a little better, but as the paper is a dark orange brown all the images I have seen are quite poor. We really need to get hold of a modern, high quality colour photo, but as far as I know that would require paying the BL £30 an image for the pictures (AFAIK the ms has not been digitised) and signing a restrictive "no reproduction" licence. It is a shame that the ms does not fall within the scope of the IDP. BabelStone (talk) 23:16, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If you are in touch with the curators then, should they have photos for their research, they could choose to release a copy for you. This would not involve a default contract with BL reprographics restricting use and as no copyright would apply it could be put up on Commons. By the way this is exactly the sort of thing that the wmuk:Microgrants are for if the problem were only money; it's just a shame that there would be a default contract for such a photo. Fæ (talk) 23:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
