CCC Forum

Commencing from the 2017-18 season, the club will be using an online system called PhotoEntry for the submission of images to its digital competitions. The process for submitting prints remains unchanged.

Members are being sent an e-mail which contains a link to the PhotoEntry system, a userid (which is the e-mail address you have notified to the club for correspondence) and a temporary password. You will be prompted to change the password to one of your choosing at your first login. There is an automated option to reset a forgotten password which you can invoke from the login page. If you forget any of your login details, you can also ask me to send a reminder via e-mail which will have a new temporary password.

Everyone who was at Chairman's Evening on 6 September for the launch of the PhotoEntry should have received their initial e-mail. Other members who are eligible to enter the club's competitions will receive theirs in the next few days along with written instructions on how to use the system. If you have not seen your introductory e-mail or do not want to wait for the instructions, let me know by sending me a PM or responding to this post and I will send one to you.

The system is straightforward to use. Simply select the competition you wish to enter and if it is open for entries you will be able to submit up to three images. All you have to do is specify the title, select the image on your computer and upload it. Images are checked in real time and you will be notified after completion of the upload if there any issues. You have the option to amend your entry at any time up to the closing date. Display of your image(s) on the PhotoEntry system is confirmation that your entry has been successfully submitted.

Entry for the first DPI competition on 4 October is now open and you have until midnight on Saturday, 30 September to submit your images.

The login for the PhotoEntry system is at: https://compent.photoentry.uk/compent

In addition, the PhotoEntry website has a comprehensive user guide on its main page: http://photoentry.uk/

If anyone has questions or requires assistance, either speak to me a club meeting or send me a PM via the forum.

Behind the scenes, Dicentra which is the competition software the club uses, has always done some checking of images shown in digital competitions. It looks to see if they have the correct pixel dimensions (1400 x 1050) and colour space (sRGB). In every competition, invariably there are always a few images which do not comply. Where it can, DiCentra has been applying corrections automatically. This is necessary to ensure that images are displayed at their optimum. Something which I am sure every entrant wants.

With the introduction of PhotoEntry, checking of images takes place as they are uploaded to the system. For the first time, members will be able to see whether their images comply and take correcting action, allowiing much more control than previously. To assist those who are unsure of their options, I have prepared a short guide. In some cases, the entrant can either allow PhotoEntry or DiCentra to apply the required changes automatically or make the correction themselves. In those instances, the alternatives are shown:

Wrong Colour Space

• Allow DiCentra to convert to sRGB automatically or
• Amend and resubmit

Image Too Large

• PhotoEntry reduces automatically or
• Decrease size and resubmit

Image Too Small

• Increase to correct size and resubmit

A member has reported that messages from PhotoEntry are going into their Spam folder. Everyone who was at Chairman's Evening should have received two e-mails. The first has details of their userid and temporary password, while the other is an introduction to the system. Anyone who believes that they should have had these e-mails but has not seen them is advised to check their junk mail and adjust their filters accordingly if they find anything. There will be regular communications sent via PhotoEntry in respect of the club's competitions.

The remaining members who have not yet been set up will receive their userids in the next few days, along with documentation about using PhotoEntry which will be sent to everyone. Anyone who does not receive an e-mail with their details should either speak to me at a club meeting or send me a PM or e-mail via the forum.

At the club's meeting on 20 September, a couple of members mentioned that they had received the following warning when uploading their images:

"Image resized from low resolution upload"

At the time of of writing, this message is not included in the PhotoEntry Help documentation, so I asked the developer for an explanation. This is his response:

"The warning is quite independent of the jpeg image quality. It is triggered when one of the image dimensions is greater than the target dimension, but less than 2 x the target dimension. So for e.g. a target width of 1600, it would trigger if the uploaded width was between 1601 and 3199. This is because the interpolation necessary to downscale under those conditions might lead to visible degradation compared to a downscale from an original with more pixels."

There is some useful help to be found for PhotoEntry at the link below. It can also be accessed from within PhotoEntry using the link at top left on the screen and is a good place to look for anything about which you are unsure. This is where the advice for the undocumented message will be added. Given that I have had a prompt turnaround for the various queries I have had regarding PhotoEntry, I am expecting that this will happen soon.

https://photoentry.uk/faq/faq.html

The guidance notes for using PhotoEntry which Tom distributed recently are also available on the club's website. Link below.

http://www.croydoncameraclub.org.uk/Web ... idance.pdf