1st DPI Competition - 15 October 2014

[Mike Farley]

The first digital projected image competition of the 2014-15 season will be held on 15 October 2014, when the judge will be Gordon Roots ARPS. Entries should either be handed in on CD/DVD or memory stick at the meeting of 8 October 2014 or sent via e-mail to croydoncameraclub@gmail.com by midnight on Saturday, 11 October 2014. Entrants must state in which class they are competing.

All members should have a printed copy of the competition rules, which are also included with this post or can be viewed on the club's website along with the general instructions. Note that this year the club is requesting that entries are sent as both 1024 x 768 and 1400 x 1050 sizes. This is to comply with the latest South London Federation requirement that clubs submit DPI entries in both sizes for its competitions as host clubs have projectors with differing resolutions. If your image is selected to represent the club, we will not have to ask you to supply a second copy.

http://www.croydoncameraclub.org.uk/Mem ... nRules.htm

Entries should consist of up to three images which should conform to the following criteria:

• Maximum dimensions of 1,024 pixels horizontally and 768 pixels vertically (1400 pixels x 1050 pixels for the second version)
  
• sRGB colour space
  
• Image file names should be a two digit number to show the order in which it is to be projected, followed by a space and the title (e.g. 01 Rusty Nail.jpg).

It is recommended that you save your files with the JPEG quaility setting set to its maximum level. The JPEG standard was initially designed to reduce the file sizes of images and one way in in which it does this is by removing information during the compression process. Using the highest quality setting ensures that the extent to which this occurs is minimised.

Not all entries received conform to the above requirements, with the omission of colour space settings or incorrect file names being the most common errors. In the case of the former, the competition software does an automatic correction, although there might be unexpected changes in colours as a result.

There is advice on the club's website about preparing images for competition, but if you are unsure of any aspect of processing your entries you should speak to a Council member.

[Mike Farley]

It has been pointed out that using the standard naming conventions described in the previous post could cause problems, as we now require two different sized versions of each image which will result in people ending up with two identically named files.

To avoid this issue, the normal 1024 x 768 image should be named as usual, i.e. 01 Rusty Nail.jpg. The second file with images at 1400 x 1050 should have the word "large" appended to its name, i.e. 01 Rusty Nail large. This will ensure each file has a unique name. It would also help if members could submit their images in two separate Zip files, one for each resolution. By adopting this strategy, no entries will have to be renamed to set up internal club competitions, which will make the job of creating the competition much easier for the organiser. Images selected for inclusion in the club's SLF DPI panel will be renamed, but this is a much simpler task as they will be fewer in number.

Hopefully all is clear, but send me a PM or submit a post to the form if you require any clarification.