Author matches the infobox photo's, and that photo
isn't old or low-res.
Infobox photo is already fresh and good quality
(not old, not low-res).
Unused category photos with no depicts statement
at all (nothing to compare — they need one added).
Category photos that are an article's current
infobox photo — with a button to fetch the previous one.
Unused Commons photo (new candidate)
Current Wikipedia infobox photo (existing)
About this tool
Finds photos in a Wikimedia Commons category that are not yet used
in any Wikipedia article and depict a person, then
pairs each with that person's current Wikipedia infobox photo
so you can see whether the new photo is an improvement.
Searching
Category — a Commons category, with or without the
Category: prefix. Spaces, underscores and + all work.
Start / End date — filters by the file's
upload date. Defaults to the last three months;
Previous month, This month and This year
prefill other common ranges.
You can prefill the form from the URL:
?category=Photographs_by_Mateusz_Malta, optionally with
&start=2026-05-01&end=2026-07-31, and
&search=1 to run it immediately.
Copy static URL (next to the search button) builds that link
from whatever is currently in the form, so you can share a search without
assembling it by hand.
Toggles
Hide same-author candidates (on) — hides a candidate when
the current infobox photo is by the same photographer and is already
good, so another of their photos adds nothing.
Hide when current photo is good (on) — hides a match when
the infobox photo is already good, whoever took it.
Show no-depicts photos (off) — switches to showing
only unused photos with no depicts statement. Nothing to compare, so
these are a "needs a depicts statement added" list, with search links that
guess the person's name from the filename.
Show category photos already in use (off) — switches to
showing only category photos that are an article's current
infobox photo, each with a button to fetch the previous photo by a
different author.
The last two are exclusive views: turning one on replaces the comparison
results and disables the other toggles.
What "good" means
A photo counts as good when it is present, not stale (taken
within the last 12 months, falling back to its upload date) and
not low-res (2 megapixels or more). Stale dates and low
resolutions are marked in red.
Buttons on each row
Copy — copies the bare filename (no File:
prefix) ready to paste into an infobox |image= field.
Edit — opens the article in the wikitext editor.
Find previous photo by a different author — walks the
article's revision history and shows the previous infobox photo that
someone else took, with when and by whom it was replaced.
Notes
The "current infobox photo" is the image the article actually displays,
which often differs from the photo set on Wikidata.
A photo can be live on several language Wikipedias; each appears as its
own row, because each wiki has its own history.
All data comes from read-only calls to the public Wikimedia APIs. If a
search fails with a "busy" message, Wikimedia is briefly rate-limiting
us — wait a moment and retry.