Background
Way back in the mists of time (before 1998) Microsoft, HP and some others decided technology was brilliant and display devices were as good as they can get and settled on a colour gamut which monitors and professional printers could reproduce and this range of colours became a standard.
However, like all standards, it was soon bettered and monitors, printers and cameras could achieve brighter and more saturated colours but all the numbers to describe colours had been used up (0 to 255 for each of
R,G, and B) so they had to rescale the colour range so now 255Red was brighter than the old 255Red.
In 1998 Adobe decided this new colour scheme was for them and created Adobe RGB1998 and they called the old scale sRGB for StandardRGB.
So from then on every picture with critical colour has to have a tag embedded describing which scale of colours it’s using.
In practice, only pictures with highly saturated, bright colours will show a marked difference if you get it wrong.
Image editing software is colour aware and will know which colour scheme to use. Unfortunately if you send a picture with an embedded Adobe 1998 tag to a display device which doesn't understand what this means. e.g. our projector, then colours will not be displayed correctly.
So
The most important thing is to get the colour space right.
So we may need to Convert the Embedded Profile. Unfortunately every version of Photoshop and Elements is different but hopefully you’ll understand the procedures. Go to EDIT > CONVERT TO PROFILE.
If the ‘Source Space’ says sRGB then do nothing and CANCEL.
If the ‘Source Space’ says Adobe 1998 or something else then use the ‘Destination’ dropdown box to select 'sRGB IEC61966-2.1'.
Press OK
Digital projectors use images fed to them from a computer and a computer makes up images
from small square ‘tiles’ called pixels.
This means that to be sure that what you see on the screen is the same as what you want to see then make your image 1400 pixels wide by 1050 pixels high.
(The following suggestions apply to 'Adobe Photoshop' but other software will be similar)
- Maximum width for a landscape format image is 1400 pixels.
- Maximum height for a portrait format image is 1050 pixels.
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- If you are dealing with a landscape format image go to Image>Image size and change the width to 1400 pixels ( make sure the resample image box is ticked)
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- If you are dealing with a portrait format image go to Image>Image size and change the height to 1050 pixels ( make sure the resample image box is ticked)
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- Now go to Image>Canvas Size. At least one, and maybe both, of the height and width pixel size will now be correct.
- If only one is correct then change the pixel size of the other one to the correct value i.e width to 1400, height to 1050.
- Choose what colour you want the extra canvas to be. I suggest black or grey.
- Click OK
- There is no need to alter the image resolution.
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- If you use 16 bit images in 'Photoshop' you will need to convert to 8 bit.
- Save the image as a Jpeg. Go to FILE > SAVE AS..... and give your image a filename like this,
<image number>-<your competition number>-<image title>.jpg
So if I my competition number is 8 and my second image called ‘Two Dogs’ would have a filename like this…. 2-08-Two Dogs.jpg
If I am number 21 and my third image is called ‘A Big Stick’ then it would have a filename like this…. 3-21-A Big Stick.jpg
If you would like to download your own copy of these notes as an Adobe PDF file click here
PLEASE NOTE The right of BMBCC to retain an image entered in competitions for possible use in outside events, e.g. PAGB Great British Cup, NWPA folios, web-site etc, is given unless withdrawn by the author at the time of entry.
Copyright of course remains with the photographer.
