About Competitions

Regular Competition Rules

Digital files must be uploaded via the website in the ‘Members Only’ section. 

For the purposes of digital competition, your image must fit into a 1280 pixel  wide x 1024 pixel high space (see Digital images for competition).

The image coming from your digital source (camera, etc) and the image you process on your computer with editing software will almost always be larger than this. Consequently your image will need to be reduced in size at some point in your workflow.  Specific instructions on how to size your images with your particular software are provided in Competition Rules, Procedures & Guidelines > Digital images for competition.

Uploading Your Images and Information

( All Competitions )

Entries:  You identify and upload each individual entry to our highlandscameraclub.ca web server.  All information about your image is provided on the website form – there are no paper forms to fill in or hand in.  Images are uploaded via the “Member Only” section. You use the website upload page to identify and upload the your images.

To submit an image you must have a login id and password. Paid up members have a login id/password; new members will have them emailed shortly after they join. If you don’t know your login id/password, simply email membership@highlandscameraclub.ca for a reminder.  If you remember your login id but forget your password, please use the reset password facility on the log in page.

Preparing Digital Images

Number one rule in editing your photos is “don’t over-write your master image file”.  One way to prevent this is to make a copy of your image, save it in a work folder, and then make all of your edits on this working copy.

You should edit your image at its original resolution.  The final step is cropping and saving it in the format that you require. This might require you to open and close the image in PhotoShop or other editing software multiple times. To do this without ruining the quality of your image, these intermediate saves must be done in the photo editor’s native format (a PSD file in the case of PhotoShop). By saving to the native format, you will retain your image layers and the image will not be compressed when saved. If you were to repeatedly save/re-open the file in JPG format you would eventually overly compress the image and it would become pixelated.

Cropping your image is an important step to improve your image’s composition. However, recognize that while the Crop tool is one of PhotoShop’s most important tools, it’s also it’s most destructive (and in some subtle ways). Once you have cropped the image, you can never restore the pixels – they are thrown away forever (unless you back track your history … but once the image is cropped and saved, the pixels are gone for good). So, while it is important to crop compositionally, it’s best to leave this step until later in your workflow.