Provide an alternative to lena.png for two examples that use it.

[ericstalbot]

I realize that lena is the standard image in the image processing world. However, I would think that most matplotlib users (myself included) are not aware of and/or don't care about standard images; and that most people would object to the pornographic origins and nature of the image. The changes will allow these people to browse the gallery and not see lena. The original lena images remain in the example sample data directory for those who are interested.

[WeatherGod]

Do note that getting rid of lena.png (which I don't advocate), constitutes a change that requires going through the deprecation process as other people's code-bases (or testing code) may have depended upon getting the lena image data from matplotlib's module.

[ericstalbot]

Thanks for the warning. I have not deleted lena.png, so it is still there for code to use. I have simply added a second set of images, and changed the two example files to read the new images. As I understand it, as long as the lena images are still in the sample data directory, then nothing will be broken.

[efiring]

I think I have always found both standard images--lena and the mandrill--faintly irritating, perhaps because they are so standard. We aren't using the image as part of a standardized test, so I don't see any reason to use a standard image. A portrait of a flower, or an ocean wave, or perhaps a less intense-looking animal than that mandrill--a photogenic bird, for example--would work perfectly well. Perhaps someone could contribute such a photo, with full usage rights? I rarely take photos, so I doubt I could dig up anything myself; but surely someone active in mpl is an amateur photographer with a nice image to contribute.

[dmcdougall]

I enjoy photography, but rarely get time to enjoy now it though. I can look through my collection to try and find something appropriate if there's interest for it.

Of course, if anybody else has an image they'd like to donate then please feel free. Most of my photos may still be on a hard drive in the UK that didn't make it in the move to the US.

[pelson]

I know a photographer who would love to be able to contribute - I will post something this evening which can be donated to the mpl project and put under the same mpl license. We can collate images and have a little vote on the mpl-users mailing list if there are images made available to mpl from several sources.

@ericstalbot - thank you for following through from #1580. If somebody feels passionate enough to put in a pull request to get something changed then you will find we can almost always accommodate it.

Cheers,

[mdboom]

I'm marking this as 1.2.x -- not because it's necessarily a bugfix but because otherwise it won't get pushed to the main website for some time. As was pointed out, this shouldn't break backward compatibility because we aren't removing lena.png from the tree.

[mdboom]

I think it's great that this is being worked on so close to Ada Lovelace's birthday.

[WeatherGod]

I couldn't resist:
http://planetrenders.net/renders/albums/userpics/11123/ada.png

I'm going to hell, aren't I?

[efiring]

On 2012/12/11 8:33 AM, Michael Droettboom wrote:

I think it's great that this is being worked on so close to Ada
Lovelace's birthday.

Hmmm... Googling Ada Lovelace images turns up quite a few; perhaps one
of them is suitable and free of restrictions.

[efiring]

On 2012/12/11 8:33 AM, Michael Droettboom wrote:

I think it's great that this is being worked on so close to Ada
Lovelace's birthday.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ada_Lovelace.jpg

[ddale]

I vote for a variant of http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1785000/images/_1788845_statue300ap.jpg

[WeatherGod]

I see who will be joining me in hell...

[efiring]

#1599 is merged, so I am closing this.

[pelson]

👍