help:upload

Table of Contents

Danbooru Upload Guidelines

Thank you for donating your spare time to help the Danbooru collection grow. While we need a constant supply of new images to keep our collection fresh and up to date, we must make it clear that Danbooru has stricter quality standards compared to most galleries of its kind.

Here are a couple of things to know before you begin:

Read the Upload Rules before proceeding

The upload rules describe what is and isn't allowed. In particular:

Please read the upload rules in full before proceeding.

Danbooru is Subjective

Please keep in mind that not everything you upload may be approved. Danbooru judges posts based on quality, which is a highly subjective measure. While there's no way to know for sure whether a post will be approved, uploaders can gauge a rough idea of what the standards are by looking at preexisting approved posts. Search status:active approver:any to find posts that have gone through and passed approval.

Generally, posts with bad anatomy or a lot of JPEG artifacts, or very low resolution will have a hard time getting approved, while competently drawn images will be approved fairly quickly. If you're not sure whether an image meets our standards, you can try asking in the official Discord server.

Don't take it personally if a few of your uploads are deleted - we've all been there at some point. If you think your posts deserve a second look, you can appeal them. See the howto:appeal page for more information.

Uploading

To upload a post, simply either paste the link into the upload page, use the bookmarklet, or the web extension. Many of the most popular art sites are supported natively by Danbooru, so all it takes is pasting a link into the upload page. See here for a list of supported sites.

Try not to upload images from sources that aren't from the original artist or a second-party source (official accounts for a game or anime in case of official art, or a commissioner, etc), and always look for an original source whenever possible. Sites such as 4chan, Reddit, or Facebook are not ideal places to source your image, unless the artist posted their art there or has long deleted their original post.

Try to avoid picking files directly from your device, as doing this means you won't benefit from the source and artist tag autofilling that Danbooru performs. Exceptions to this are if the original post by the artist is no longer available (in which case, remember to tag bad id) or if you're uploading your own artwork (please specify so by tagging self-upload).

Minimal Tagging Criteria

Comprehensive tagging is the essence of Danbooru, its body and its blood. The basic expectations for tagging are as follows:

  • Artists must be credited.
    • If you uploaded by pasting a link, Danbooru should autofill this data for you, assuming the artist is in our database.
    • If not, read help:artists for information on creating an entry.
    • If all else fails, or the artist is unidentifiable by any conventional means (common with official art), tag artist request.
  • Copyrights which a character is from must be identified.
  • Characters must be identified.
    • Use the original tag if it's an original character.
      • Some recurring original characters may have character tags of their own. They may be listed on the artist's wiki page, which you can access through the question mark symbol next to the artist's tag.
    • Place a character request if you aren't sure where a character comes from.
  • All posts should be tagged to at least Level 1 per the howto:tag checklist.
    • If you are not sure if an image is tagged completely enough, always place a tagme tag, and another contributor will review your tags, adding and making corrections as necessary.
    • Do not frequently use tagme as an excuse for being too lazy to tag own uploads. Neglecting tagging is considered a violation of the rules and may lead to action being taken against your account if done repeatedly.

For Tagging Guidelines in greater detail, please see howto:tag and howto:tag_checklist.

Make Use of Comments, Discord and the Forum

Most of the time, a cursory trip to Google will help you accomplish most things such as finding out which copyright a character comes from. If you have an issue that where Google research just wouldn't do, please leave a comment on the image about the issue you want to clarify, or ask in the Official Discord or in the forums.

Check for Duplicates

Be sure that your post has not been uploaded by someone else. When uploading an image that the system has deemed to be a likely duplicate, a Duplicate badge will appear below the image.

If your image has already been uploaded, only upload if you have a higher quality copy. Once you have uploaded your higher quality copy, set all existing copies of the image as child posts of your copy.
Bigger size doesn't necessarily mean better quality, unless the filesizes vastly differ. For example, if one image is 800 kb and another is 840 kb, it's very likely they'll be duplicates. Always check the images closely before uploading if you're unsure.

For more information on setting Parent and Child Posts, refer to the chapter on Managing Parent and Child Posts in the Contributor's Guide.

See also

Return to the Contributor Guide
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