Help:Upload Wiki | Danbooru

This page describes how the upload system works and the rules you need to know before uploading.

Users who upload enough may be considered for promotion to Builder level. Users who consistently upload high-quality posts are candidates for Contributor level, allowing them to bypass the moderation queue entirely. Generally the threshold for consideration is 500+ good uploads with a low deletion rate (around 5%-10% or less).

Upload Rules

Please read the Upload Rules before uploading to Danbooru.

In particular:

Fully AI-generated artwork is forbidden.
Paid rewards are forbidden.
Off-topic content is forbidden; generally speaking, Danbooru is for anime-style or anime-related artwork.
Some types of content, such as furry artwork or extreme fetish content are considered borderline and may face more difficulty with the moderation queue.

Moderation

To maintain quality, Danbooru uses an approval system called the moderation queue to curate what gets displayed on the site. Please keep in mind that not everything you upload may be approved. Posts must be on-topic and be of sufficient quality to be approved.

The best way to gauge what may get approved is to look at existing posts: search status:active approver:any to find posts that have gone through and passed approval. On the flipside, search status:deleted to see posts that have failed to pass the queue or otherwise been deemed inadequate.

Posts have three days to be approved before expiring. Don't panic if your post isn't approved instantly, sometimes a post may take time for the right approver to come across it. On average, about 85%-90% of all uploads are approved, and about half are approved in less than an hour, with 90% approved in less than a day.

If your post gets deleted, you can appeal it to give it a second chance; see howto:appeal for details. You can also try asking for feedback in the official Discord server or in the forum in the Upload Feedback Thread.

How to upload

An account is required to upload. If you haven't already, please sign up by clicking the red Login link.

To upload, go to the upload page (Posts -> Upload) and paste a link to the page you want to upload. Don't paste the image, paste a link to the page itself, such as the Pixiv post, the Twitter tweet, etc. Most major art and social media sites are supported, and doing it this way lets you take advantage of many quality of life features, such as automatically extracting the best version of the image, autofilling the artist tag, uploading all the images from the same post, and more.

A faster way to upload is using the bookmarklet or the web extension. These give you a browser button that lets you upload from sites in one click.

Uploading an image from your computer should generally only be used as a last resort. This should typically only be done when the image isn't available online, such as because it's been deleted (it's bad id), you're the artist or commissioner and it hasn't been posted anywhere else (specify so by tagging self-upload or commissioner upload), or it's a scan or game extract you made yourself.

Uploads you don't post right away are stored in your My Uploads page (My Account -> My Uploads) for later access. You can use this to save images you plan to post later.

Tagging

The basic expectations for tagging are as follows:

Artist tag

The artist must be always credited.
If you uploaded by pasting a link, Danbooru should autofill the artist tag for you, assuming the artist is in our database.
If not, tag the post with artist:artist_name_here to create a new artist tag. After uploading, click the "?" next to the artist tag and add links to all the artist's social media profiles in their artist entry.
If all else fails, or the artist is unidentifiable by any conventional means (common with official art), tag artist request.
Read help:artists to learn more.

Copyright tags

If it's a known character, tag the anime, manga, game, etc the character is from.
If it's an original character, tag original. If it's a person from real life, tag real life.
If you don't know what the characters are from, tag copyright request.
If you need to make a new copyright tag, tag the post with copyright:copyright_name_here.
Read howto:copyright to learn more.

Character tags

If you know the character, tag who they are.
If you need to make a new character tag, tag the post with character:character_name_here.
If you don't know the character, tag character request.
Read howto:character to learn more.

General tags

Aim for at least 10-20 general tags.
Try to tag the character's general appearance (what they're wearing, their hair, their eyes, etc), how they're posed, and what they're doing. Think about what makes the picture unique or interesting and try to tag that.
Use tagme if you're having trouble tagging something. Tagme should only be used if you can't identify something, not as as an excuse to not tag your uploads.
Source. The source is where you found the post, usually a link to the page the artwork is hosted on. If you uploaded by pasting a link, this will be autofilled for you.
Rating. Ratings are used to gauge how SFW or NSFW a post is. Use Explicit for sex, Questionable for nudity, Sensitive for mild sexuality, or General for 100% safe for work. See howto:rate for details.

Posts will sometimes have translated tags inferred from the source. Click these tags to add them to the upload, but make sure they're correct first.

See howto:tag and howto:tag checklist for more information on using tags. You can ask for tagging advice in the How do I tag this? forum thread or in the #tagging channel of the Danbooru Discord.

Check for duplicates

When uploading a post that looks like it's already been posted by someone else, a red "Duplicate" badge will appear below the image. You can click it or check the "Similar" tab to see the potential duplicates.

Sometimes the system may make mistakes, such as with variant sets. If you find out that your copy of the image is higher quality than the existing post, post it and set your post as the parent. Likewise, if your upload isn't actually a duplicate, feel free to post it and follow the instructions in help:post relationships to set up the links between posts if needed.

Otherwise, it is heavily discouraged to post duplicates. A red "Pixel-Perfect Duplicate" badge means the image is visually the exact same as an existing post - these definitely shouldn't be posted.

help:upload (locked)