Digital Photography

Northampton Camera Club has embraced digital photography in a major way. Initially digitally produced prints were accepted into the print competitions. This included all prints produced via a computer and printed on an inkjet printer, whether the original pictures were scanned from slides, negatives or conventional prints, or taken on digital cameras.

The club has a high quality digital projector which enables images to be projected directly from a computer. Digital Projected images are accepted into the monthly competitions, and currently it is the most popular competition medium.

Another avenue now opened to digital photographers is in the production of AVs, ie digital slide shows with sound. A low cost program called "Pictures to Exe" enables slide sequences to be produced, with a synchronised sound track of music, commentary and sound effects as appropriate. The result is saved as a single exe file which can be run on virtually any modern PC running Windows, without any additional software. Several members are now producing such shows, which are suitable for general audiences as well as our own and other camera club members.


Preparing Images for Digital Projection.

The club's digital projector has a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. Pictures for projection should be submitted in this size for the best reproduction, whether as single images or as part of a digital AV. (The image size in inches or cm, and the pixels or dots per inch are irrelevant for screen or projector use.)

If you are using a digital camera and you are taking pictures only for projection, and you do not want to crop the picture, set your camera to this resolution. Otherwise use a higher resolution and make a correct size copy using Photoshop.

This also applies if you are scanning slides or negatives.

To resize the picture in Photoshop:

(The dialog box shown is from Photoshop CS5. Other versions may show slight differences)

  1. Open the file
  2. Make adjustments or crop as required
  3. If your image uses anything other than sRGB colour space, convert (not assign) it to sRGB.
  4. Select File - Save for Web and Devices. (You may see a warning box about image size being too large. It's usually safe to ignore this.)
  5. Check that the 'chain link' icon shows linking the Image Size Width and Height boxes to Constrain Proportions
  6. Select Quality as 'Bicubic Sharper'
  7. Enter the required New Size. The result must fit within a window of 1024 pixels wide and 768 pixels high
  8. Press Enter key
  9. Select JPEG and High or Very High in the Settings box.
  10. Click OK and save the copy.
File Naming. NB New requirements with effect from 1st Feb 2012

If you are entering an image in a club competition, then the file name must adhere EXACTLY to the following convention:

IMAGE TITLE by Author Name.jpg

Note:

Examples:

N.B. If you use the 'Save for Web' feature in Photoshop and use spaces in the filename, they will be replaced by dashes (not underscores). Clarification will be sought on whether this is acceptable. Watch this space!


If your version of Photoshop (or whatever you are using) doesn't have the Save for Web option, then:

  1. Select Image.. Image Size and change the size in a similar way as described above, making sure the Resample Image box is ticked.
  2. Then click File - Save As and select JPEG in the Format box and give it a file name. Click Save.
  3. Select High in the JPEG Options panel that appears.

The resulting file size will probably be between 100 and 300 kbytes, (depending on the amount of detail in the picture). Copy the file to a USB memory stick (preferably) or a CD.

Checking Your Monitor

In order to get the projected image looking close in colour and brightness to that seen on your monitor, make sure that your image is in sRGB colour space.

Also check that your monitor uses the sRGB colour space icm profile as default

Download the test images: Monitor Test Image and Colour Wheel to check your monitor