digital comps

[Roberta]

Our club is starting digital comps. Is there anything that you do diffrently to a print comp
roberta

[sponner]

Re: digital comps

I have read somewhere that a very fine white border around the image can help

[Imageryone]

Re: digital comps

Most clubs set out a standard presentation ie length of longest side or finished overall size. All how they want the borders or background and what colour.

Just remember not to sharpen quite so much as you would for prints as there is no ink to fill the image.

For those of you who may think this odd. For print, you can slightly oversharpen and the inks in your printer will run into the over sharpening to give a perfect finish.

[terryw]

Re: digital comps

The biggest problem I've encountered from clubs just starting out with DPIs (Digital Projected Image) is that they forget to change the resolution to 72 dpi and also forget to save it as a .jpg at the best setting (12 on PS).

At the two clubs I go to we use 1024 x 768 pixels for the landscape (don't worry if the height is less than 768 since 1024 is maxium length) and 768 pixels high for portrait style. A square image is 768 x 768 pixels.

With respect to skinny borders (2 - 3 pixels) it depends on the image. A light bright image doesn't really need one so its main use is to contain a dark image against the black background of the projection.

I hope this helps......... a bit?

Terry

[Roberta]

Re: digital comps

Many thanks I'll keep tat in mind.
roberta

[Invicta]

Re: digital comps

Our club is starting digital comps. Is there anything that you do diffrently to a print comp
roberta

Hopefully your club will calibrate their projector. The main differences between projected image and print competitions are:

1) Colour space - try and get a copy of the club's projector profile or softproof with sRGB colour space.

2) Sharpening - projected images need different level of sharpening to prints

3) A keyline is useful for projected images to separate the image from the black background.

[Graham_of_Rainham]

Re: digital comps

As well as running the DPI Comps at my own club, I visit many other clubs as a judge, so I get to see all sorts of set ups.

The "standard" for PAGB DPI is 1400 x 1050, but many clubs have kept to 1024 x 768 due to the cost of update of projector.

When dealing with all the images coming in from members, the biggest problem is when people send things to you at the wrong; size, format, type, colour space, etc...

You will need a "convention" for file names ie: Big Ben by F Bloggs.jpg to keep track of who's image is showing. This is especially important in "theme" comps as "Big Ben" may well have been shot from many similar angles and they all start to look the same.

You can use standard Windows/Mac image viewers linked to a projector to show the pictures, but a dedicated competition software will help, as it will "control" uniformity of size, name conventions, etc., and help with scores.

Have a look at: http://www.filmfreeprojection.co.uk/

A good calibration image that everyone can access and use to see if their image "Looks different when projected to how it looks at home"

This is a good one to use, as it can also be printed and compared to calibrated/profiled prints if required.

http://www.peak-imaging.com/downloads/Fujical.jpg

It will require re-size to match the projector.

However this re-size is also useful as it too can show if there are any re-size issues from the process used.

This is one areas attempt to provide a "standard" image

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.southernfed.org.uk/league/testimages/PDITest1400.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.southernfed.org.uk/leagueguidance.htm&h=1050&w=1400&sz=413&tbnid=0Aoqageqk_lvMM:&tbnh=92&tbnw=123&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dprojector%2Bcalibration%2Bimage%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=projector+calibration+image&usg=__PvqAyCknxaMHH-otaER8Lw5s2S8=&docid=9xOieCWCnNrtMM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Tjs3UerZB-TC0QWc2YH4CA&sqi=2&ved=0CEkQ9QEwCA&dur=14587

It can be quite "interesting" when people first see their pictures on the big screen, as the millions of highly respected pixels, from their enormously expensive cameras are reduced to a handful of spots on a screen that was made for viewing slides, has been rolled up for years and has loads of lines across it

You would not believe some of the things I get presented with on my visits around the clubs. All good fun.

[Simon Hickie]

Re: digital comps

I'm offering my suggestions as a club competition secretary. Some will duplicate what Graham has said.
1. Image sizing: 1024 maximum wide by 768 maximum high. Squarer or more elongated images should be black filled to 1024 x 768. The alternative is 1400 x 1050.
2. A full HD projector will project to 1920 x 1080.
3. LCD projectors give better colour balance than DLP ones (generally).
4. Your laptop may need HDMI connection to a projector.
5. Check your laptop's graphics capability if you want > 1024 x 768.
6. Limit PDI borders to 1 pixel and NOT WHITE - pick a muted midtone or slightly paler
7. Use sRGB colour space.
8. Calibrate laptop & projector professionally (profiles not transferrable between laptops).
9. Consider DICENTRA projection software
10. Insist in consistent naming of PDIs: XXXXXXXXXXX by Yyyyyyy Zzzzzzzzz (image title in upper case).
11. Ensure PDIs are JPEGS.