Contributing Pictures to the KLOV

The KLOV is always looking for new or improved images of cabinets, artwork, screen shots, hardware, etc. If you have taken photographs of games or scanned portions of artwork for your own personal use and would like to contribute these to the archive, please read the following to help keep the process of adding these images as efficient as possible.

PLEASE DO NOT STEAL GRAPHICS FROM OTHER SITES AND SEND THEM TO THE KLOV KEEPER WITHOUT FIRST OBTAINING WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE OWNER! If you find a site containing images that the KLOV is looking for, please send the URL of that site to the KLOV Keeper so official permission can be obtained before the graphic is used.

Cabinet Pictures

One of the KLOV's goals is to have a cabinet picture for every entry in the archive. Please check the list of missing cabinet pictures to see if you might have photos of games that are needed. Cabinet pictures submitted to the KLOV should fit within the following parameters:

View - Ideally, for games with side art, images should show about 70 to 80 percent of the front of the cabinet and about 20 to 30 percent of the side. For conversions without side art, a close-up of the game that shows the front of the machine, from the top of the cabinet down through the control panel, is fine.
Type - Images should have 24-bit color depth. The final graphic will be in JPEG format, but contributions can be made in other formats such as TIFF, BMP, TGA, et. al.
Scale - Please do not resize images. The KLOV graphics are now auto-scaled to fit the page. If a photo is larger, a person is now able to click on the picture to view the full-size image.

Please scroll down the page for additional requirements and requests.

Marquee and Control Panel Pictures

One of the KLOV's goals is to have a marquee picture for every entry in the archive. Please check the list of missing marquee pictures to see if you might have photos of games that are needed. Marquee and control panel pictures submitted to the KLOV should fit within the following parameters:

View - The best looking marquee images are usually those that have been scanned. A close second would be pictures of the marquee taken from above (and away at a slight angle to avoid reflection) outside on a clear sunny day. After that would be images snapped from the marquee still mounted inside the machine (illumination from the outside of the cabinet is usually better than backlighting).
Type - Images should have 24-bit color depth. The final graphic will be in JPEG format, but contributions can be made in other formats such as TIFF, BMP, TGA, et. al.
Scale - Please do not resize images. The KLOV graphics are now auto-scaled to fit the page. If a photo is larger, a person is now able to click on the picture to view the full-size image.

Please scroll down the page for additional requirements and requests.

Editing

Tools

A number of excellent graphic tools are available for editing images. Adobe Photoshop is probably the industry standard graphic editor, but its cost and complex features can be somewhat problematic to the casual user. As an alternative, a freeware editor called "The Gimp" (The GNU Image Manipulation Program) is available for several computer platforms at http://www.gimp.org/.

A less complicated, but still powerfull, freeware editor from ArcSoft for the Win95, 98, ME, NT platforms called "PhotoStudio 2.0 SE" is available from here.

Backgrounds

Since the majority of game photos are taken in non-studio environments, to make these images look consistent throughout the database, all the pixels surrounding the object should be changed to white (RGB 255 255 255) to match the KLOV's default background. Depending upon the complexity of the object, the "cropping" of this image may take only a moment or it may require a considerable effort.

At this time, the KLOV does not employ any graphic artist to edit images. If the contributor would be kind enough to remove the background and size the image according to the guidelines in the following section, this will save the current KLOV staff a great deal of time.

Naming

For each game in the database, a number of different graphics can exist. To differentiate between the many types of images, each file name begins with a lowercase letter as follows:

a - assorted or other multiple cabinet image
b - cabaret, mini or converted upright cabinet (if a dedicated exists)
c - cabinet (mostly upright - dedicated or conversion)
d - reserved
e - reserved
f - front panel art
g - side art close-up
h - bezel close-up
i - instruction card close-up
j - Japanese name
k - cocktail cabinet
l - logo
m - marquee
n - control panel
o - movie (3-D graphic)
p - PCB
q - neo-geo marquee insert close-up
r - alternate marquee
s - sit-down, cockpit, twin, deluxe or environmental cabinet
t - promotional cabinet topper or additional game card close-up
u - reserved
v - title screen
w - screen shot 1
x - screen shot 2
y - screen shot 3
z - screen shot 4

Following the first letter, the KLOV name is spelled out using case sensitive letters, numbers or symbols, replacing any spaces (" "), colons (":"), question marks ("?") or slashes ("/") with underscores ("_"). At the end of each name, one of the following file exensions (lowercase) is used to denote the image type:

.gif - GIF image
.jpg - JPEG image
.mov - Movie image (3-D model)
.png - PNG image

As examples, a JPEG image of the marquee for Dungeons & Dragons would be named ...

mDungeons_&_Dragons.jpg

... a cabinet photo of Robotron: 2084 would be named ...

cRobotron__2084.jpg

... and the emulated screen shot for the title screen of Zaxxon would be

vZaxxon.png

Where to Send the Images

Please send images to the KLOV Keeper's email address, listed on the Contact/FAQ Page. Several images attached to a single email are preferred, but the use of ZIP archives or other formats are acceptable as well.

Return to the KLOV main page | Contact the KLOV Keeper

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