Preparing Digital Images

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). At the competition there will be a sign-in sheet for entrants. Any image entries where the maker has not signed this sheet will be shown but disqualified from ranking.

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.

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.)

Image format (HD digital projector)

• JPEG (quality 12/Maximum)
• sRGB color space
• No larger than 1900 x1050 (or 1920 x 1080 with border and black canvas)

Details

1. Open the image in Photoshop (or a comparable photo editing application such as Lightroom, etc). The steps below apply to Photoshop. For those using Lightroom, use the Export function to apply the desired parameters (details at bottom of this page).
2. 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.
3. In Photoshop select “Image Size” – check ‘Resample image’. Ignore the Resolution entry for pixels/inch. (Use comparable settings for other photo editing applications.)
4. In the top box entitled Pixel dimensions, make the changes below, depending on the orientation of your image.
5. 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.
6. PORTRAIT: Change the height to 1050 pixels and then click OK.
7. If the image is mainly a square (approx. equal height and width), reduce the height to 1050 pixels.
8. 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. (Such borders are particularly important in images that are dark near the edges, in order to separate the image from the background on the projected view). 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.)
9. 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.
10. Sharpen the image (if not already done) using whichever sharpening application works best for you.
11. Save as JPEG file (under different name in order to preserve your original image).
12. 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.
13. Upload images to our digital competition server at: http://digcomp.pacamera.com/(this link – ‘Upload images for competition‘ is also present in the in the list of links on the right side of our home page)
    
14. 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.
15. 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).
16. 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.
17. The maximum number of images for judging is currently 50. If the entries exceed 50, the lowest priority entry images (when 3 have been entered) will be automatically dropped.
    
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    For members who are familiar with the use of Photoshop Actions, a set of actions is available (in Photoshop CS4) for implementing many of the above steps. If you wish to receive this action contact the webmaster at <info AT pacamera.com>.

    Those with Lightroom have an easier alternative, as suggested on 12-22-10 by one of our members:

    “Preparation of images for submission to PACC digital competitions in Lightroom is a lot easier than in Photoshop. Go to File and then Export. In the File Settings section (click the triangle to the left of “File Settings” if it isn’t already expanded), choose JPEG as the Format and sRGB as the color space (which should be the default for JPEG already). Then in the image sizing section, choose Resize to Fit: Width & Height – W: 1920 and H: 1080 pixels. This will resize your photo to fit within a box that’s 1920 pixels wide by 1080 pixels high, which is what you want for the PACC competitions. This will work whether your photo is in a landscape or portrait orientation. It will resample your photo to retain the same aspect ratio while decreasing the number of pixels overall to fit.”

    If you have questions please email the Digital Chair as early as possible (listed on Officers page).

Updated: Jan 6, 2013