Rule Chanes for the Photo Contest

[johnnynumfiv]

Being it a new year, I thought it's bout time for some change around here in the photo comps.
New proposed rules:
Levels, Curves, Colour Balance, Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation, cropping, or anything else capable in the development process or with filters and common special lenses are allowed to use in Photoshop or other image editing softwares.

Time limit either eliminated or put to 6 months.

What you y'all think?

[henk4]

I agree with the expansion of the time period. Allowing certain things in photoshop could open the floodgates though...

[Fumacher]

dont think that the photoshop-thing is good

[Revolution]

Perhaps just cropping and brightness and contrast in PS allowed, and extend or remove the time limit?

[johnnynumfiv]

dont think that the photoshop-thing is good
Expand on your opinion.

[Lani Kai]

Well, the one question I've had and haven't asked is, what if I shoot in RAW and not JPEG?

[johnnynumfiv]

What are the differences between shooting in raw and jpeg?

[my porsche]

for the time, against the PS'ing, as it basically eliminates the need for photographic skill what-so-ever

i think RAW should be fine,

[my porsche]

What are the differences between shooting in raw and jpeg?
raw provides less distortion when resizing, correct lani?

[Fumacher]

Expand on your opinion.
yups....expand the date should be good ;)

[Fumacher]

Well, the one question I've had and haven't asked is, what if I shoot in RAW and not JPEG?
you can convert it into jpeg....:)

[johnnynumfiv]

for the time, against the PS'ing, as it basically eliminates the need for photographic skill what-so-ever

Not really.
If you guys thinks something should be added or taken out specificly(sp?) for the photshop part, say it.

[henk4]

Not really.
If you guys thinks something should be added or taken out specificly(sp?) for the photshop part, say it.

well, not everybody has photoshop in the first place (at least officially). Microsoft Office has a picture manager programme which I use from time to time, which has far less options. May be that could be allowed to be used to the full?

[johnnynumfiv]

Not everyone has windows ;)
And it also doesn't say just photoshop, other programs can be used.

[sl55kleemann]

I think a general photography is good without photoshop, and 6 month limit force people to take new pictures.

[netburner]

I think the only things which should be allowed should be brightening (not every shot is good lightened) and resizing (which must be done, because of the 800*x rule).

I think the timelimit could be 3 months, would be OK for me :)

[Pinin]

Increasing the time limit is good. I think cropping should be allowed too, but I'm not sure about the rest.

[Guest]

just allow cropping & resizing, also ease off on the time limit, ps will just mean less skill will be required behind the camera

[my porsche]

I think the only things which should be allowed should be brightening (not every shot is good lightened)
slower shutter speed surely supplements such silly solutions;) :p

[Egg Nog]

I agree with what some of you are saying, brightness, contrast, saturation (without being silly), etc should be fair game, but that's all. If you had crappy weather, that's not your fault, but if you just took a badly put-together photo, that is your fault :)

[CHEESE-TACULAR]

no croping no bightening no contrast or color control or any other bull. im strongly against all of it because it blurs the line between the skilled and avreage photographers. yes you can do it with a special lens, filter or setting on your camera, but the difference is that when your out on the feild and you decide maybe ill put on my amber filter on or maybe ill use 1/100 shutter speed is different than sitting infront of a ready picture for 20min. decieding how you can make it better.

im against it

[johnnynumfiv]

Would this be too extreme of a change?
I had to resize the original to be able to upload.
All that was done to the photo was crop and hue/saturation.

[CHEESE-TACULAR]

Would this be too extreme of a change?
I had to resize the original to be able to upload.
All that was done to the photo was crop and hue/saturation.
yea that would be way too much-i hate when people crop for a competition

[Esperante]

Sounds fantastic. Everyone should be allowed to fiddle with hue/stauration/contrast etc, as many cameras do it anyway. Borders are a nice touch as well. Those of you who oppose have no reason to.

Hue/saturation/contrast can make a bad photo presentable, but in the long run, it's still the quality and subject of the photo that matters in the end. It's simply new means of presenting it to the voters.


for the time, against the PS'ing, as it basically eliminates the need for photographic skill what-so-ever

Bullshit. Sorry, but that simply is. If you want me to get in to detail, I could, but the belief that PS destroys all talent is just plain out wrong.

[RacingManiac]

if you shoot raw you have to retouch the WB or sharpening and whatnot....thats the whole point of shooting in raw anyway....

[Rockefella]

I would comment but I'm not sure as to which option is better myself.

[Egg Nog]

Oh, and one more thing - I don't think that black and white should be allowed - maybe there can be a seperate monthly contest for that or something. It seems like another loophole advantage, since black and white always brings out the best in a photo. I love B&W photography, but this thread is supposed to be about levelling the playing field, right?

[drakkie]

When i started this photographic competion,many months back, i based my rules on THE thing i hated in the automotive photography competition.

As stated before i brings the level of skill in this competition down.If you cant take a proper picture without all thse editing equipment, you are basically a poor photographer. I have pictures that with the use of photoshop would be absolutely perfect for the comp, but because of ps, cannot be entered.I do not mind it,because i think a picture should be as true to the original as possible.


Oh, and one more thing - I don't think that black and white should be allowed - maybe there can be a seperate monthly contest for that or something. It seems like another loophole advantage, since black and white always brings out the best in a photo. I love B&W photography, but this thread is supposed to be about levelling the playing field, right?

it does is a loophole in the rules.Because most modern digital cameras have a setting for Black and white.However you could hve just put in a B&W film in a normal camera.IMHO this should still be allowed.However, "aftermarket" black and white modifications should not.

I promise i will have a thorough conversation when Cotterik is online again,abouta revision of the rules.

[PerfAdv]

I would comment but I'm not sure as to which option is better myself.
Same here.

Perhaps, we can have a comp where we can enter altered and unaltered pics. You just have to say whether it's PS'd or not, or "what" since I don't have PS. We'll see if it really makes a big difference.

[Lani Kai]

you can convert it into jpeg....:)
But if that's all I can do then that defeats the purpose of shooting in RAW anyway. For example if I shoot RAW in low light and overexpose to just under the clipping point I can increase the signal to noise ratio to tame noise, and then in post-processing I can bring down the exposure then convert to JPEG. I can alter the white balance to my liking, as the camera may not get it right when I'm shooting. Of course I could adjust the Kelvin values manually while shooting but it's a pain to take a shot at so many different values and with the 1.8" LCD, it's not always possible to judge what is best right away either. Shooting in RAW allows the photographer to alter things like sharpness, contrast, saturation, and color tone without introducing those ugly JPEG artifacts. Many professional photographers use RAW and it's for a good reason. I don't think they post-process because they can't take good pictures straight from the camera; they do so because there is the potential for an even better image.

[Pinin]

yea that would be way too much-i hate when people crop for a competition
Please... any good photographer crops their picture if it's needed. Croppping should Definatley be alowed, and it was when the competition started too.

[CHEESE-TACULAR]

Please... any good photographer crops their picture if it's needed. Croppping should Definatley be alowed, and it was when the competition started too.
are you planning on selling your picture? or hanging it up? this comp is for the photo itself and if you have to crop than you couldnt get close enough on thefeild

[RacingManiac]

are you planning on selling your picture? or hanging it up? this comp is for the photo itself and if you have to crop than you couldnt get close enough on thefeild


My water droplet shot from few weeks back was a crop, I don't have a macro lens than can physically be focused that close, nor would I want water to get on my camera...

People who shot film still develop their photo, and your run of the mill corner photo store may or maynot develop as well as someone who does it in their own darkroom. Its the same when shooting raw. Instead of letting the algorithm in the camera determine how to develop the shot, we get to do it with raw.....

If you can't accept that then there is no point for digital photography....

BTW, in camera like the Maxxum 7D, you can't actually shoot B&W, and you can only post adjust it through manipulating raw file, because thats how the digital camera does it anyway....

[90ft]

With people shooting digital nowadays the PS is part of the skill. You can shoot knowing what ou can do later.
I think you should allow anything.
Photography as a form of art includes any post processing. OK it used to be dodging and burning and tinting filters and whatever else. Now it includes PS.

If you can't compose a good image throught he lens then you probably can't do it in PS either. But if you can't get hte shot you wnat for some other reason - like you don't have hte lens or you can't get close enough then you can work around it with what you have available to you - which includes PS for many.

I think you should allow anything.

[Pinin]

are you planning on selling your picture? or hanging it up? this comp is for the photo itself and if you have to crop than you couldnt get close enough on thefeild
? It makes no difference if I'm hanging it on a wall or showing it on a photo competition. If I crop is still is the photo itself. With a bit cut off.



I think you should allow anything.
I don't think so, this is afterall a photo competition, not a photoshop competition. Basic stuff should be allowed, like for example cropping, maybe even turning a photo into b&w but 'anything' shouldn't be allowed imo.

[VtecMini]

Dear lord... This is getting a bit messy.

Here's my tuppence;

Basic levels alterations should be allowed, including changing to monochrome.
This thing about allowing people to change to the black and white setting on the camera, but not being allowed to alter it in photoshop is utter idiocy and heavily biased towards people that have cameras that have that option. I am not one of these people, because I have a proper camera. Should I have to trade down my camera so that I can enter a monochrome shot? No, of course not, because I can do the same thing in photoshop.

Cropping should be allowed
I often take shots with the intention of later cropping them. Because I do not have a panoramic camera, I can not take pictures in the proportions that I'd like some times, so I make sure I have the width correct, take the shot, then later crop it to create the image I had planned right from the start. To limit everyone to a 4:3 proportion is daft.

The time limit should probably stay though, it keeps the images a bit fresher.

[Esperante]

What do you people not understand? A bad photo will remain a bad photo no matter how much photoshop is applied. Photoshop is means of touching up a good picture. It absolutely does NOT bring down the skill level. I'll give you an example a bit later...

[spi-ti-tout]

For:
Resizing
Cropping

Against:
Isn't it obvious?

Just because hue, saturation and contrast are allowed to be adgusted some cameras it still does not make ti fair for all. Look at the difference between the h/s/c options a digi-cam and an editing software of the PC has. Quite a lot, I think as softwares have a wide scale for that *perfect* choice rather than as photographers have to think quick when shooting quickly-moving objects like birds on trees and such.

OR

We could leave the current comp as it is, and start another comp with PS-rules allowed. That way, not only does everybody get what they want BUT photographers also have the chance of submitting in a different photo from the many taken a week.

[CHEESE-TACULAR]

My water droplet shot from few weeks back was a crop, I don't have a macro lens than can physically be focused that close, nor would I want water to get on my camera...

People who shot film still develop their photo, and your run of the mill corner photo store may or maynot develop as well as someone who does it in their own darkroom. Its the same when shooting raw. Instead of letting the algorithm in the camera determine how to develop the shot, we get to do it with raw.....

If you can't accept that then there is no point for digital photography....

BTW, in camera like the Maxxum 7D, you can't actually shoot B&W, and you can only post adjust it through manipulating raw file, because thats how the digital camera does it anyway....
point 1: what does that prove? ill only tell you to get a macro lens or ring

point 2:thats different than some of the things you can do in photoshop, ps alows things like selective cropping, selective sharpening, and color adjustment. not to mention the obvious air brush option and etc.

Point 3: ill refer to my earlier post; its different when you have to make these decisions beforehand out in the feild

i like spi's idea btw

[Rockefella]

I've come to a general conclusion. IF we disallow photoshopping, people will do it anyway, and 90% of the time, they'll get away with it.

IF we do allow it, it'll turn into another chop comp, but to a much lesser degree. Whoever has the best PS'ing skills can throw a bunch of votes their way. Guess what, this comp is screw'ed pretty much any way we go.

[Rockefella]

I've come to a general conclusion. IF we disallow photoshopping, people will do it anyway, and 90% of the time, they'll get away with it.

IF we do allow it, it'll turn into another chop comp, but to a much lesser degree. Whoever has the best PS'ing skills can throw a bunch of votes their way. Guess what, this comp is screw'ed pretty much any way we go.

I think the only way this could work is, a lifetime ban in the photo comp if any evidence of PS'ing is involved. (Considering PS'ing is banned)

[CHEESE-TACULAR]

I think the only way this could work is, a lifetime ban in the photo comp if any evidence of PS'ing is involved. (Considering PS'ing is banned)
too many people here are too good at photoshop to get caught and others will do alot of stuff cameras can do beforehand and lie about it :(

[Esperante]

I've come to a general conclusion. IF we disallow photoshopping, people will do it anyway, and 90% of the time, they'll get away with it.

IF we do allow it, it'll turn into another chop comp, but to a much lesser degree. Whoever has the best PS'ing skills can throw a bunch of votes their way. Guess what, this comp is screw'ed pretty much any way we go.
The new rule on the dockets wouldn't allow such photoshopping as the chopping comps are concered, but rather with adjusting the lighting via brightness/contrast. This doesn't mean that people are allowed to, say, edit out a building or move some people around, this is just tinting the photo slightly. If someone where to edit out a building or move people, it would be fairly obvious. You don't have to have good PS skills to adjust the contrast of a photo, unless you can't figure out how to move the little pointer around the bar.

[Rockefella]

The new rule on the dockets wouldn't allow such photoshopping as the chopping comps are concered, but rather with adjusting the lighting via brightness/contrast. This doesn't mean that people are allowed to, say, edit out a building or move some people around, this is just tinting the photo slightly. If someone where to edit out a building or move people, it would be fairly obvious. You don't have to have good PS skills to adjust the contrast of a photo, unless you can't figure out how to move the little pointer around the bar.
Perhaps, but some people will find ways to make a photo look much better/different. Take for example Johnnynumfiv's Mitsubishi Lancer edit.. the photo itself changed drastically.

[spi-ti-tout]

How about?


We could leave the current comp as it is, and start another comp with PS-rules allowed. That way, not only does everybody get what they want BUT photographers also have the chance of submitting in a different photo from the many taken a week.

Seems fair and nobody's grumpy.

[RacingManiac]

Point 3: ill refer to my earlier post; its different when you have to make these decisions beforehand out in the feild


The idea of shooting in RAW is because out in the field whatever mechanism the camera used to decide some of the setting is not always perfect, nor always consistant. Especially stuff like white balance and so forth, and unless every one uses a light meter that tells you exactly what kelvin the light source is, especially in complicating light with multiple differing source, you are not always going to get what you think you are getting. On top of that not every camera allow you to set your light temperature. There was no "decision" to make, its just how the environment and stuff that you are working in. The fact that digital photography allows you to do such a thing is supposed to be a convenient feature. And sharpening, contrast boosting and whatever, though non-selective, is usually heavy with any P&S digital camera(even on default), because most people DONT post-process, such it is the easiest way to get a punchy image out of the box, especially considering the limited size and quality of most consumer P&S camera's small sensor.

I am not advocating Photoshop, fact that I don't even process my photo in Photoshop, RAW pic is not even viewable in regular program and you need to covert them to JPG or whatever you are using. I am not saying we should allow one to selectively doctor their image(and as others said, a bad shot is a bad shot, no amount of PS is going to make it good), but we should allow the freedom as a film user would have with their negative, which is effectively what RAW is to digital photo.

[Cotterik]

woah i need to start having more spare time to read the forums heh i cant read all 4 pages so i need to know what everyone has agreed. So we can come to a conclusion and sort out what we all think the rules should be.

[rev440]

Im for the timing change and for croping but thats it.

[Guest]

right, who agrees that the time period needs to be extended, but all the rules left as they are

Me for a start

[Cotterik]

how long does everyone want the time period extended to?

[Pinin]

I think 3 months would be enough.

[PerfAdv]

How about?


Quote:
Originally Posted by spi-ti-tout
We could leave the current comp as it is, and start another comp with PS-rules allowed. That way, not only does everybody get what they want BUT photographers also have the chance of submitting in a different photo from the many taken a week.


Seems fair and nobody's grumpy.
Are you volunteering to run the PSed comp. Just start one and we'll see how popular it is. :)

[johnnynumfiv]

The PSed comp will probably be just like the average car competition...

I say 6 months for the time.

Also, I have another Idea, how bout we have new time limits and different things available to edit each month just to change things up a bit. The current comp is getting quite boring. :)

[Cotterik]

im starting to get a bit dizzy here heh the general photography competition has always been a chance for members to share each others photos that theyve taken in the past few months and vote for which one is nicest. Im not sure if themes would realy fit it, and we cant go making even more photo competitions itd get out of hand. How about I just extend the time limit to 3 months, and say that resizing and cropping only is allowed.

[spi-ti-tout]

Are you volunteering to run the PSed comp. Just start one and we'll see how popular it is. :)
Alright then, I'll do it to see how it goes.

[Cotterik]

bad idea :(

[spi-ti-tout]

It's not out of choice.

[snowskateRX8]

I'm down with the croping and lengthened time limit. Sounds cool to me.

[Rebirth of Xar]

i think the photoshop limitiations should stay how they are but if you want to have a completely seperate contest with no holds barred photoshop editing capabilities then it would be good with me.