If you are bringing images to a Tri-City Club Meeting (or submitting them for competitions), you should first resize the image appropriately, so it will be displayed correctly.  You should also know how to resize images for other purposes as well.  For example, photos that you put on Facebook should be sized 720px, 960px or 2048px wide and should not be larger than 100KB. Otherwise, Facebook compresses your images, and they won’t look their best!

A good quality print is usually printed at 300 ppi (pixels per inch). What does that mean? Well, if you want to print a 6″x 4″ photo, the image should be sized 1800px x 1200px (6″ x 300ppi = 1800px, 4″ * 300ppi = 1200px).  Or in simple terms, multiply the printed photograph dimensions by 300. If you need an 8″x 10″ print, you would need to make sure your image is sized 8 x 300= 2400px wide by 10 x 300=3000px high.

Here are a couple of videos that go through pixels, resizing etc.

Requirements for Club Images

Images submitted to TCPC can be either for the purposes of competitions, to share for feedback or simply for the pleasure of enjoying each other’s work.  How we submit the images needs to follow a certain format in order to minimize, or even better, eliminate any additional work for Steve.  The organization of our images for presentation to the club and advancement to competitions is reliant on file naming.

The two important criteria are image sizing and how the image file is named.

Image Naming

File naming:  File naming requirements may be different depending on how the image is to be used or what it is for.  In general, file naming requires the image title, the photographer’s name as well as some dashes and spaces in the correct places.

For Competitions

When submitting an image to the TCPC for an external competition (Lions Gate Celebration of Nature, North Shore Photographic Challenge, CAPA etc.) use the following format.

Image Name – Photographers Name.jpg

The above example has a dash between the image name and the photographers name.  There is a space on either side of the dash.  There is also a space between the words of the Image name and the words of the photographer’s name.  (Don’t be afraid of the space!  No need for underscores or extra dashes)

Here is an example of a properly named file.  The image title is followed by a space, then a dash, then a space followed by the photographer’s name.

Good Examples

A Stunning Photograph – Jane Doe.jpg
Another Stunning Image – Joe Schmoe.jpg

Erronous Example

A_Stunning_Photograph-Jane_Doe_edited output.jpg.jpg

Note that the period and the letters jpg (which are indicating that this is a jpeg file and which are on the file by default) are left in place and do not have spaces.

Lastly, competition images are to be submitted to: competitions@tricityphotoclub.ca

For sharing during in-person meetings

When bringing images to share at a club meeting, we want the photographers name to come first.  So use the following format:

Photographers Name – Image Name.jpg

Image names are not required for these, but it is good to practice naming your images.  If you don’t have names, you can name your images with numbers, like the examples below.

Photographers Name – 1.jpg
Photographers Name – 2.jpg
Photographers Name – 3.jpg

If you have three images and they all have names, and you want them displayed in a particular order, you can use numbers AND names.

Photographers Name – 1 – Image Name.jpg
Photographers Name – 2 – Image Name.jpg
Photographers Name – 3 – Image Name.jpg

Image Sizing

When exporting your photo from your editing program please set the horizontal edge to be a maximum of 1920 pixels and the vertical edge to be a maximum of 1080.  Depending on your image data you might notice that the exported image doesn’t exactly fall into the set dimensions.  This is normal as your editing program might need to make an adjustment to maintain the images aspect ratio.  When an adjustment is made it will always be a little bit smaller, never bigger.

Valid image sizes: 1920×720, 1920×1080, 1620×1080, 1080×1080, 720×1080

Invalid image sizes: 4000×3000, 1080×1920, 1920×1280

Always export your image as a jpeg file, using sRGB colour space

There are many ways to resize images. One of the easiest is with the export presets in your post processing software. But you can also resize images without special software using Preview on a Mac and Paint on a PC, both of which come with the computer. Here are some directions for a few different methods. For more details, check out the attached links.

Resizing with Lightroom

• Edit your photo if needed.
• From the menu choose File > Export to bring up the export dialogue window.
• In the Image Sizing box, check Resize to Fit.
• Select Long Edge from the drop-down menu. This will limit the size of you longest edge to the pixels you choose.
• Input the value and units (1920 pixels for a landscape orientation, or 1080 pixels for a portrait oriented image).
• For projected images and images for the web, set the resolution to 96 pixels per inch
  
  
• If you plan to print an image, select Dimensions from the drop-down menu.
• Set the length, width in pixels, but this time change the Resolution to 300 pixels per inch.
  
• Click Export and your resized image will be sent to your computer.
• For a more detailed explanation, see the excellent article on the Photography Life website at https://photographylife.com/how-to-properly-resize-images-in-lightroom.

Resizing with Preview on a Mac

• Start Preview and open an image (or double click on a jpg file from the Finder).
• To make sure that you are working on a copy of your original higher resolution image, select duplicate from the file menu. Give your image a new name.
• From the menu, select Tools > Adjust Size.
• From the Image Dimension box, select 1920×1080 from the drop-down menu in the Fit Into box. this will automatically limit either the width to 1920px or the height to 1080px, depending on the image orientation and aspect ratio.
    
• Here is a link to Apple’s support page for more information.

Resizing with Paint on a PC

• Double click on an image file to open it up. This should open the image inside Paint.
• From the home menu (in Windows 10), select resize. This will bring up the Resize and Skew box.
• Enter 1920 in the horizontal dimension, making sure that pixels and maintain aspect ratio are selected.
• You may notice that the vertical dimension is bigger than 1080 now. This happens if the aspect ratio of the image is not as long and skinny as the projector’s aspect ratio. If this is the case, change the vertical dimension to 1080 pixels. This will resize the horizontal dimension down.
• Choose Save As to save your image and give it a new name. This will preserve your higher resolution file.
    
• I believe that in older versions of Windows, you could set a Long Edge or Short Edge dimension, but this is no longer available in Windows 10.
• Here is a link for more detailed instructions.

Resizing with Photoshop Elements

• Very similar to Lightroom.
• For detailed instructions, here is a link to Adobe’s instructions.