Guidelines for Preparing and Submitting Digital Images for Evaluation and Competition on Slide Evenings

Effective beginning Jan 2010

N.B. Members must be present during the competition evening for their images to be ranked. If you submit images and later find you cannot attend, please email or call (on cellphone) one of our co-Presidents ASAP. (Cellphone numbers can be obtained by emailing the webmaster) Exceptions are allowed only for 'Corresponding Members' - former resident members who have moved away from the area and wish to maintain their membership. We suggest printing these guidelines to facilitate following them during preparation of your images. Before using them, check this web page to make sure you have the latest version. Login name and Password for the digital competition server. All new members should have received an email containing this information from our digital competition co-chair (currently Leonard Brzezinski) soon after joining. Save it in a safe place. If you have not received it or can't find it, you can get it by going to our digital server's Login page at http://digcomp.pacamera.com/member/login.php. At the bottom of that page is a red link entitled "Forgot your Login Name/Password?" Clicking that link will allow you to enter your email address, to which our server will immediately send this information. To ensure the best match between the image on your monitor and that shown by the digital projector, calibration of monitors with a colorimeter system (such as those made by Pantone, Colorvision or X-Rite/GretagMacbeth) is necessary. (Our projector is periodically calibrated an X-Rite system.) As of Jan 2010, we have upgraded to a new HD digital projector. The new format overview for this projector: JPEG (quality 12), sRGB, no larger than 1900 x1050 (or 1920 x 1080 with border and black canvas). Details below. Open the image in Photoshop (or a comparable photo editing application) If your image is in layers (PSD or TIFF format), flatten it. If it is 16-bit (from RAW source), convert it to 8-bit. Select "Image Size" – check ‘Resample image’. Ignore the Resolution entry for pixels/inch. In the top box entitled Pixel dimensions, make the changes below, depending on the orientation of your image. LANDSCAPE: Change the width to 1900 pixels. Click OK, unless the height is greater than 1050 pixels. In this case, just change the height to 1050 pixels and click OK. PORTRAIT: Change the height to 1050 pixels and then click OK. If the image is mainly a square (approx. equal height and width), reduce the height to 1050 pixels. If you wish to add a small border (1-2 pixels on each side) do so by increasing the canvas size, and specifying the color. If you do add such a border it is very important to increase the canvas size again, this time to 1920 x 1080 pixels, and using black as the canvas. This will leave some 'breathing space' so that the projected image does not clip the image border. (This step applies also for images with critical information at the edge.) Select "Edit - Convert to Profile" (in earlier versions of Photoshop this may be under Mode) and under "Destination Space" select “sRGBIEC61966-2.1” from the pop-up list. Click OK. Sharpen the image (if not already done) using whichever sharpening application works best for you. Save as JPEG file (under different name in order to preserve your original image). When saving, select JPEG quality level of 12 (maximum) if you have an Internet broadband connection (cable or DSL). If you use 'Save for Web', make sure you check the box entitled "ICC Profile" - to ensure that the embedded sRGB tag remains with the image. Otherwise your image on the screen may not appear the way it did on your monitor. Upload images to our digital competition server at: http://digcomp.pacamera.com/ (this link is also present in the 'blue box' on our home page) When entering titles, use only alphanumeric characters - NO abbreviations (e.g., "&", "#"), slash marks (/), brackets, commas, colons, semicolons, quotation marks, etc. They do terrible things to the title. There are 3 image categories - Pictorial Color, Monochrome and the special category for the month (the same as for Print competition that month). The current limit for the evening is 3 images/maker, with a maximum of 2 in any one category. (See qualification in item 17 below). Please submit your images no later than 3 pm on the Monday before Digital Evening so there is time to incorporate them into the slide show program. The earlier the better. The maximum number of images for judging is currently 50. If the entries exceed 50, the lowest priority entry (when 3 have been entered) will be automatically dropped. ............................................................................................. For members who are familiar with the use of Photoshop Actions, a set of actions is available for implementing many of the above steps. If you wish to receive this action contact the webmaster. If you have questions please email the Digital Chair as early as possible (listed on Officers page).