Competition information for our 2009 Exhibition

Our Annual Exhibition will run from Wednesday 11th February to Friday 13th February, 2009. All the activities take place in the main hall at Poynton Civic Centre. A display of more than 140 prints from members of the society will surround the hall and monitors will show the members’ digital image entry. Unlimited on-site parking and a large seating capacity are features at our venue, with refreshment facilities available prior to events and during intervals. By popular request, on the Friday we shall again be staging an evening of musical entertainment.

Here are details of the competitions (now known as the "North Cheshire Challenges") held on the Wednesday and Thursday. (This is independent of the entry and judging of members' work on display in the Exhibition).

Inter-Club Digital Print Competition

For the Alan Adshead Trophy, Wednesday 11th February 2009 at 20:00.
Judge: Keith Brown FRPS MPAGB EFIAP

Our Digital Print Competition took place for the first time in 1998 and is now a regular part of our Exhibition which attracts clubs from Dumfries to Dysinni.

(A "digital print" is simply any print that used a digital image anywhere in its production, in contrast to a wet-darkroom print from out-of-the-camera film. When this competition began in 1999, such prints were unusual. Now they are mainstream, but we retain the original title for continuity!)

Competing clubs must enter 5 digital prints from 5 workers. Images must be different from those in the Digital Image Knockout Competition (below), and must not have been entered in any form in a previous event held during an NCPS Exhibition week.

Prints must be mounted on boards no greater than 20 inches by 16 inches. There is a single "open" category, colour and monochrome are both welcome, and there are no restrictions on print size (or shape) other than the board size.

Prints must be delivered to the venue before 19:30 on the evening of the competition.

Inter-Club Digital Image Knockout Competition

For the North Cheshire Challenge Trophy, Thurs 12th February 2009 at 20:00.
Judge: Mike McNamee FRPS FBPPA

Starting February 2008, our Digital Image Knockout Competition replaces the Slide Knockout Competition that we operated continuously since 1984 which regularly attracted an entry of 20-25 clubs from the L&CPU and beyond. Towards the end, the only way we could maintain a high quality entry was to allow slides to be provided by just 3 workers. Furthermore, a significant proportion of slides in the last year or two were digitally-mastered. These well-recognised trends have eroded our original aims of a club-oriented slide competition.

We invested in a state-of-the-art 1400x1050 (SXGA+) resolution projector (Canon XEED SX60), and will be using this in combination with unique software which tracks progress during the competition and prints results at the end of the evening. Last February, our new competition proved to be every bit as popular as the one it replaces.

Competing clubs must enter 5 digital images from 5 workers. Images must be different from those in the Digital Print Competition (above), and must not have been entered in any form in a previous event held during an NCPS Exhibition week.

Digital image rules

File format

Each image must be a JPEG, exactly 1400 pixels wide and 1050 pixels high, and if the picture itself is smaller than 1400x1050 pixels, the remaining area must be a chosen background, for example black. It should be converted (if necessary) to sRGB colour space, and ideally the colour profile should be embedded.

(Parameters such as "DPI" or "PPI" will be ignored).

File names

The filenames should be "clubname01.jpg" (and "...02..." to "...05..."). "clubname" should have no spaces, and should not start with a number, but otherwise all that matters is that it is unique within the UK. (For example, NCPS01.jpg).

Submission

(Details of the method of submission will be supplied early in the new year. We expect to accept at least CDs/DVDs).

Verifying conformance to the rules

Experience shows that up to half of all digital images submitted to our events, such as internal and Exhibition competitions, are incorrect in some way!

It is recommended that entrants open all of their images in Photoshop or similar for a last check before submission. This only takes seconds, but can save a lot of time and anguish.

The screen-shot here shows what the "Info" panel in Photoshop CS3 looks like with a conformant image, if it is configured suitably. To use it for this purpose, Photoshop itself needs to be using "pixels" as its "Ruler Unit", using Edit > Preferences > Units & Rulers. Then the "Info" panel needs to display the illustrated information, using Palette Options via the drop-down menu shown in red to set all the "Document ..." information.

The essential details are highlighted just for this page:

Now - verify the filename! Ensure that it has "clubname01" before the dot, and "jpg" after the dot, with no extraneous details such as a name or a title.

Thanks!

Other details

Calibration:

 

(Guidelines revised 24 October 2008)