This is a question that often comes up and generates a lot of confusion, wallpapers that are collages. I’m going to explain a little here, both for those who wonder why they're actually allowed and those who get mad when I removed their wallpapers for this reason.
Anyway, at first glance, it appears that according to our site terms, they’re not allowed. However, if you pay attention to what it’s really saying, you’ll realize that they actually are. Let me show you:
Wallpapers cannot simply be a collage of cut-and-pasted screen shots. This requires no artistic skill.
Now if you read that, your first thought might have been that collages aren’t allowed at all. Wrong. What’s not allowed are wallpapers that are nothing more than cut-and-pasted screen shots. The idea when making a wallpaper is to put some creative effort into it. This means making modifications to the images and adding effects, or creating a type of theme when you place them in the wallpaper.
Capturing screenshots, scanning a source and simple resizing them does not equal artistic skill. There is some skill involved in getting a good quality image, but that’s about it. You need to do more. I’m more than willing to allow colleges if it’s apparent that some effort was put into making it more than just a cut and paste job.
There are plenty of collages around the site that I leave up since it’s obvious some effort was put into making it. Here is one example:
It looks like nothing more than a collage, but if you download it and look, you can see that some sort of effect was done to each and every image. Those we do allow. Here’s another example:
This is a collage too, but effort was put into making it look like someone was preparing pictures to put into a photo album. And for good measure, here’s another example:
So as you can see, they are allowed. You just need to actually do something to make it into a fun background for others. Just as you need to remember that if I remove something for being a simple collage, it’s not because I think I’m better than anyone else or have better skills. It’s because I uphold the site terms out of respect for the community as a whole.
Mouthing off in my direction only shows a poor attitude on your part. It’s not unreasonable to ask people to put effort into the wallpapers they upload here. And it’s pretty easy to search the net and find all sorts of sites with tutorials on how to do effects and make wallpapers.
When I first started making stuff, I didn’t know what I was doing either. I actually got “modding” by Adam himself. I got a polite pm telling me to remove the wallpapers I had that were screenshots. I had actually done more, but the effects were minimal at best since I didn’t know what I was doing.
I asked for clarification and got none. I was a bit frustrated back then, but that was before I became staff and fully understood that he didn’t have time to guide me through how to improve. And realistically, that’s not his or any moderator’s job.
So what did I end up doing? I went through and removed everything that had the simplest effects. I took all of those backgrounds down and tried to start over. I sent a reply pm saying what I had done and asked if there were others I had missed, could he let me know so I could remove them. I never heard back from him on that.
Later on, I even ended up purchasing the manual on how to use photoshop so I could do more effects and make better wallpapers. It’s also why every time I make a new one, I remove one of my older wallpapers. I can do so much more now.
So bottom line, yes you can do collages. Just make sure you’re actually putting some effort into it. And if I remove some and tell you that you need to do better, don’t get angry, just do it. Take that pm as a wakeup call for improving. That’s what I did and look what happened, I ended up working for the very person who “modded” me to begin with. =P
