Guidance for

Projected Digital Image (PDI) Competitions

This leaflet sets out the rules for PDI competitions and guidelines for preparing images.

General conditions

  1. A maximum of two images may be submitted per PDI competition. Images must not have been used in previous print competitions.
  2. Images may only be submitted on Memory Stick (the preferred choice), CD or CD-RW, to the Competition Secretary.
  3. The entrant’s name, and date of competition to which the submission applies, must be written using fine permanent marker on the CD surface. Memory Sticks, being re-usable, will use a securely attached label.
  4. An official entry form COMPLETED IN BLOCK CAPITALS must accompany all digital images submitted (this can be collected from the Competition Secretary or downloaded from the Club’s web site). Each image must have a title in the format "TITLE by Author.jpg". Titles on forms must coincide with titles of images within the accompanying Memory Stick or CD.
  5. Entries should be received by the Competition Secretary, by the meeting one week prior to the PDI competition, to be entered in the following week’s competition.
  6. The Competition Secretary has the right to refuse late entries.
  7. Images may be captured by either digital camera or scanned from the entrant’s original slide or print. Laboratory scanning is permitted providing the original image was on negative, slide or print which was the work of the entrant.
  8. Images may be straight images with no manipulation, manipulated images or composites of several images providing that the originals were taken by the entrant using the photographic process. Wholly computer generated images are not permitted.
  9. Memory Sticks and CD’s will be available for collection at the event for which they were submitted, after which they will be kept in the Club’s storage cupboard for a reasonable time.
    10.

Acceptable Image Sizes

All images will be judged within a pixel size of 1280 pixels (horizontal) x 1024 pixels (vertical)

This is to comply with the resolution of the projector. Images may not necessarily fill this pixel space, dependant on source and subsequent manipulation. Images larger than this size can be automatically re-sized by the projection software but may lose quality, compared with down-sizing in e.g. Photoshop.

Image Format

The image format should be JPEG to ensure consistency and minimise the time to display the image and must have the file extension '.JPG' or '.jpg', unfortunately no extension or '.jpeg' will not work with the PDI software. Other formats, such as GIF, TIFF, PSD etc. will not be accepted by the new software.

The JPEG should ideally be saved at compression level 9-10 to retain quality.

The title MUST be in the format TITLE_by_Author. Note the capitals for the title, the use of spaces and lower case for "by", as anything else will not work with this new software.

Colour Space

Images should be in sRGB colour space for consistency. If your images are in the Adobe RGB 1998 colour space, or anything else other than sRGB, then it is recommended that you convert the image to sRGB in your image editing software before submitting it.

If this means nothing to you, the chances are that you are already using sRGB as it is generally the default colour space that cameras and editors use.

Converting Colour Space to sRGB
  1. With image open in Photoshop, choose Edit
  2. From drop-down menu choose Convert to Profile
  3. In Destination Space - Profile choose sRGB IEC61966-2.1
  4. Press OK
    5.

Resizing your image

You should resize your image to fit within the pixel area specified above for the particular image format. This procedure is for Photoshop but it is similar for other image editing software.

  1. From the Image menu, choose Image Size. The Image Size dialog box is displayed:-


    2. Landscape Images Portrait Images
    Landscape Format Portrait Format
     
  2. Make sure the units you have selected are pixels (see above).
  3. Make sure the Constrain Proportions box is ticked. If your image is in Landscape Format, set the width to 1280 pixels. If your image is Portrait Format, set the height to 1024 pixels.
  4. Ensure that your image fits within the 1280 x 1024 boundary. Note that the resolution does not need to be changed, as it is the pixel resolution that is important. Click OK to resize your image.

How to create a JPEG file in Adobe Photoshop

Saving the Image
  1. From the File menu choose Save As. The Save As dialogue box is displayed:-

    2. Save Dialog Box

  2. Select the folder you want to save to. If saving to Memory Stick or CD choose My Computer and identify the device in the pop-out box. Type in the correct File Name, as will be put onto the competition entry form.
  3. Make sure the Format field is set to JPEG.
  4. Click the Save button. The JPEG Options dialogue box will then open:-

    5. Image Quality

  5. Set the image to Quality 9 or 10, which will retain the quality of the image without the file size being too large.
  6. Make sure the Format Options is set to Baseline ("Standard").
  7. Click OK.

JRJ 9/2008