Print Competitions consist of an Open and a Set Subject.  All entries to be mounted, minimum size A4, preferred mount size 40cms x 50cms.

THE RULES:

1. Each member may enter up to two prints into the open and up to two prints into the set subject (total 4)
2. The prints may be colour or monochrome, digital or darkroom
3. The print area must be no smaller than 8” x 10” and no larger than 20” x 16”
4. The mount must be no larger than 20” x 16”
5. On the reverse of each print put your name and a print title (if no title is included it will be put before the judge as untitled)
6. No identification must appear on the front of the work
7. The judge will appraise each print in front of the assembled members
8. Each print will then be given a number and put on display at the back of the hall
9. After all the prints in the set subject have been appraised the judge will view all the prints on display and in secret, chose a first, second, third, and up to two highly commended and two commended
10. The same procedure will be followed for the open section
11. Finally the winning prints are displayed and photographers revealed
12. The prints from this competition and any other during the year, will be put before another judge towards the end of December in a final competition  entitled “the print of the year “
13. It is a condition of entry that the winning prints from each competition must be made available for the final competition entitled “the print of the year”.
    

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For NPG Digital Image Competitions:

1. Projection of images on club nights will be handled in a standard format, to ensure everyone has an equal chance to have their work shown.
   Images must be saved as sRGB, at a resolution of 72 pixels per inch. Images at full size as may be used for printing are not acceptable for projection due to the large file size.
   
2. Images must be in the format required by the event:
   for internal club competitions .jpg file format is required, but note that .tif file format is usually required for external competitions. When saving jpg, use the best quality setting available.
   Images must be saved as 1024 pixels maximum width and 768 pixels maximum height.
   You can reduce one of these dimensions if you wish but either the width must be 1024 or the height 768.
   This ensures that images will fill the projector screen, and are a suitable size for handling by the club equipment.
   Images supplied in other formats such as .psd, will not be shown.
3. The images must be transferred to Mike prior to the event (e.g. via a standard USB memory stick or email) so that they may be prepared on the club equipment, and allow a smooth presentation on the night.
4. Images should be sequenced according to your preferred viewing order e.g. named 01, 02 etc in a folder that separates them from other content that may be on the memory stick.

Note: You probably use AdobeRGB(1998) colour space for images printed locally. Images for display on websites or for printing via photo labs set up for this, should be sRGB format however.

TIP: You can record a Photoshop "Action" to automate the process of converting a group of images into a new folder, including resizing, colour space, resolution and format conversion.

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Two files are required for each image:

i) the image file, and
ii) the associated xmp file containing the titling information to appear on the website.

Step summary:

1. save your image at 72 ppi in TIFF format set to 1024 pixels maximum width and 768 pixels maximum height. 
   You can reduce these dimensions if you wish but one side must be a maximum of either 1024 (width) or 768 (height)
2. add xmp information to the image by using File>File Info, not forgetting to Export the information. 
   Use the Author field for the photographers name and use the Description field for the image title, followed by details of the exhibition in which it has been accepted. See the image pages on this website for examples of what to include - usually the competition name, date and any special awards.
3. save the xmp file in the same folder as the image using File>File Info>Advanced>Save or File>File Info>Export depending on your Photoshop version.
4. send the above 2 files per image on CD to Mike, for incorporation in the website

More detail on this technique, plus how to handle other formats is contained in the document for download here.

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Gaining BPE Distinctions.

For every acceptance in a BPE Exhibition you gain a crown award, when you have collected 25 Crown awards you can apply free of charge for a Crown rating award. Each successful applicant will receive a Certificate and a Ribbon and will be able to use the letters BPE1* after their name. You can enter the same work in each BPE Exhibition but once accepted in an exhibition it cannot be used for that exhibition again. Unaccepted work can be entered in the following years, if you think with a new set of judges it might be more successful. If you gain a further 25 Crown awards (50 in total) you can apply for your BPE2* and so on, see table below.
Please remember there is no time limit in gaining awards:

• BPE1*...……………25 Crown awards
• BPE2*……………...50 Crown awards
• BPE3*……………..100 Crown awards
• BPE4*…………..…200 Crown awards
• BPE5*…………..…300 Crown awards

This link to the BPE web site will give you more information (also see under "Links").
The Norfolk Photography Group actively encourages its members to participate in both BPE Exhibitions and FIAP exhibitions through its Exhibitions and Distinctions Sub-Group.

List of BPE Exhibititions:

• Southport - January
• Vale of Evesham - February
• Guernsey - March
• Rushden - March
• Wirral - March
• Solihull - April
• Cotswold - May
• Glasgow - May
• Beyond Group - July
• Great Barr - August
• Shrewsbury - September
• Bromsgrove - October
• Dingwall - October
• Bebington - November
• Havant - Date not known

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Federation International de l’Art Photographique.
(International Federation of Photographic Art)

The Norfolk Photography Group is affiliated to the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain through the East Anglian Federation of Photographic Societies. FIAP is an International body of which the PAGB is affiliated.

Many International Salons of Photography worldwide have FIAP patronage.
The exhibitions are run and judged in a similar way as the BPE Exhibitions (for more detail see "BPE Explained").
There are a number of FIAP distinctions which can be gained with acceptances in FIAP exhibitions. AFIAP (Artiste FIAP); EFIAP (Excellence FIAP); MFIAP (Master FIAP); ESFIAP (Excellence of Service) Hon. FIAP (Honorary Service).

To gain the first of these AFIAP – In any International FIAP patronised exhibition, in any five year period or more (does not have to run consecutively) you must have received a minimum of 75 points.

• Slide Acceptance - 1 point
• Print Acceptance - 2 points
• Digital Acceptance – 2 points

You must have used a minimum of 10 different prints/digital or 20 slides (a mixture of both may be used based upon their approximate ratio) AND to have received at least 2 awards (medals, ribbons, highly commended etc).
Evidence of all acceptances must be provided including FIAP patronage reference numbers. Every accepted image must be represented by thumbnail sized photos on an A4 sheet. A portfolio of between 5 and 10 unmounted A3 prints or slide duplicates of your top accepted work must be submitted for assessment by a panel of judges, if 5 or more pass this assessment you will be awarded the AFIAP (best to submit at least 7 images).
FIAP will keep your portfolio whether you pass or not. Once you have gained the AFIAP you may progress to EFIAP etc.

The Norfolk Photography Group actively encourages its members to enter these exhibitions through its Distinctions and Exhibitions Sub-Group.
For further information, click here or on the PAGB link found at the foot of our “Home” page and run down the various categories on the left hand side. You should find FIAP at the foot of this list.

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Photographic Alliance of Great Britain.

The Norfolk Photography Group is affiliated to the Photographic Alliance through the East Anglian Federation of Photographic Societies.

The PAGB is an organisation that coordinates specific activities for photographic clubs in England, Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland. It does this through 15 geographical regions known as Federations.

The PAGB organises national competitions and events for its Federations and for clubs. It also offers other services such as the Recorded Lecture Service available for inclusion in the programme of events for individual clubs and it has its own photographic distinctions (these are referred to as awards for photographic merit). These are:

• CPAGB – Credit of the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain
• DPAGB – Distinction of the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain
• MPAGB – Master of the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain

Access is via membership of an affiliated club through its Federation.

This link to the PAGB is also at the foot of the “Home” page.

The Norfolk Photography Group actively encourages its members to achieve these distinctions together with those of The Royal Photographic Society (LRPS – Licentiateship of The Royal Photographic Society; ARPS – Associateship of The Royal Photographic Society; and FRPS – Fellowship of The Royal Photographic Society) through its Exhibition and Distinctions Sub-Group.

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Adobe have recently released a new suite of CS4 programs, a new versions of Lightroom (2.4), and Camera Raw converter (5.4).
This latest version of Photoshop CS4 has interesting new features and is simpler to use than CS3. The new versions of both Lightroom and Bridge also allow the easy creation of basic web pages.

Adobe released updates to Lightroom2 and the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in, as free upgrades.
These provide added raw file support for the newer cameras including Nikon, Canon and Panasonic, but note that not all of the older programs, notably Photoshop CS3, are supported by the new plug-in.
Camera Raw 4.6 and the DNG Converter 4.6 will be the last Camera Raw update for Photoshop CS3.

For Windows, use this link to download the latest update for the latest version of the Adobe Raw converter and Camera Raw profiles. The download is a zipped file which when opened has two parts. The first is a file called Camera_RAW.8bi and the second is Cameraprofiles.exe.
Carefully follow the instructions in the Readme file for your system, to replace the camera.raw file in it's correct folder.

Latest versions of the Canon DPP software are available free from Canon including the latest Canon RAW codec plug-in. The Nikon download area is here.

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A free "Instant JPEG From Raw" utility is available now from RawWorkflow.com. It doesn't interpret or convert your raw image data, it just pulls out the JPEG preview embedded by your camera. It can optionally downsample these JPEGs to a lower resolution as well.

Note that this is not an application and does not require Photoshop or any other program. It attaches itself to the Windows or Mac Operating System, so just right click on a raw image (or folder of raws) to invoke it.

Also of note: Bridge CS4 offers the ability to browse just embedded JPEG data, bypassing the raw processing stage to enable quick initial passes through a collection of images.

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There are many occasions when the range of lighting levels in an image is beyond the capability of the image processing within a digital camera. If the image has been shot in RAW all the available information is recorded and we have the opportunity to recover of up to 2 to 3 stops of shadow and highlight detail in the computer.

The following instructions which can be downloaded here show one of the many ways in which this can be done in Photoshop Elements.

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Paul has sent in a helpful description of his own method of mounting photographic prints for display.

Please be aware that some exhibitions will not allow tape on the back of prints as they require a smooth backing. To overcome this simply cut a piece of card/strong paper to the full size of the mount and affix over the taped back of the print to give a completely smooth surface.

The description can be downloaded from here.

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As image file sizes grow bigger, image processing is one of the heaviest tasks your PC will do.
If you would like to understand something about the specification that would suit your workload best, you may find this article by Tim Grey useful. The pdf document is available free to download here.

The key to value for money performance, is to balance the different components in a PC to reduce the inevitable bottlenecks. Although his 2004 article hosted by Microsoft is getting a bit long in the tooth with regard to the latest PCs, the principles remain sound and may help guide your next purchase.

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Adding Rain to an image (the easy way)

1. Create a new layer above the image.
2. Fill this layer with white.
3. Now go to Filter > Add Noise, choosing an amount of about 90%. Select Uniform and Monochromatic.
4. Go to Image > Adjustments > Levels and drag the black point slider approximately quarter of the way across the Histogram (about 64 on a 255 levels image).
5. Blur the noise. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur using a very small radius of less than 1 pixel.
6. To create a more realistic rain effect now go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and select an Angle of about 60 and a Distance of about 50.
7. Now go to Filter > Artistic > Plastic Wrap. Select a Highlight Strength of about 20, 14 for Detail and 3 for Smoothness.
8. Now go to Filter > Other > High Pass and use a Radius of about 70.
9. To complete the effect apply the Motion Blur as before (see step 6 above).
10. In Layer Blending Modes set this rain layer to Hard Light and you should now have your rain showing in the image.

Note: To lessen the effect reduce the opacity of the layer.
To increase the realism of the effect, repeat the process using a slightly different angle at step 6.
Make an Action with these steps if you want it to rain often!

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Print your name and title on a strip of white paper A4 width (8.25inches) and by approx. one inch deep, then attach to your print on the bottom right hand corner looking at the front of your print, which should look like this:

Guide to fonts and layout:

1. (one line space)
2. Title # 1----------(14 point, Times New Roman Bold)
3. (one line space)
4. Author----------- (12point, Times New Roman Bold)
5. (two line spaces)
6. Title # 2-----------(as above)
7. (one line space)
8. Author----------(as above)----------And so on down the page and then slice into individual title ⁄ author strips.

Fold your title strip as shown below and tape down.

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One big failing in Elements is that it does not have a satisfactory Curves function. Elements 5 makes a poor attempt but it is a long way short of the Curves provided in Photoshop CSx. However there is an excellent FREE download which makes up for this deficiency at http://free.pages.at/easyfilter/curves.html

It also works in CSx and in PaintShop Pro and operates at both 8 and 16 bits. Although it is not designed to work as a separate layer I believe it is, in some respects, better that the function provided in CSx.

submitted by: Jack Gentle, November 2008

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