Common Problems with Submissions of Digital
Images for Jurying in W.A.A.C. Art Fairs
Mike
Bailey
March 2010
(Click Here to Print as a PDF)
Ø Pixel
sizes were too large, greater than 1920 pixels in the longest dimension.
Ø Pixel
sizes were too small, smaller than 1500 pixels in the longest dimension.
Ø Image
file sizes were too large, greater than 2.0 megabytes.
Ø Image
file sizes were too small, less than 1.0 megabytes.
Ø No
color profile was set in the image.
Ø File
names were wrong.
Ø Background
color was set to a color other than black.
Ø Booth
shot was a very poor quality.
Ø Signage
in the booth shot identified the artist.
Ø Artist
was in the booth shot.
Ø Art
images were poor quality.
Ø CD
was not in a protective hard plastic sleeve.
Ø CD
was dirty, with fingerprints or other marks on surface.
Ø If
CD brand was an off-brand or store brand there was
more difficulties in reading.
Ø Gummy
labels put on CD interfered with the CD reader.
Ø Custom
printed labels on CD made reading more difficult.
Ø CD
or paper sleeve written on with hard pen, like a ballpoint, causes read errors.
Image
Problems
Pixel
sizes are fairly self-explanatory, but if they are too
large, we cannot use them without adjustment.
If they are too small, they cannot be used at
all because the quality would be too poor if enlarged for jury viewing. If the image file sizes are too small, this
probably indicates the file was saved with compression
set too high, or jpg quality set too low.
The image will display badly.
A color
profile missing is very harmful to the successful display of your image. We can only guess at the color profile, so
use sRGB, which it should be. But, if
you did the work yourself in Photoshop or had a professional do it, and you
used a color profile or space like Adobe RGB, then
saved the file without a color profile, it will look very washed out and dull
if it was not converted and saved with the sRGB color profile.
When
writing a CD be sure to indicate in your CD software
that it is a data CD and that you want to close the session when done. The most reliable type of CD to use when
sharing with other computers is CD-R, not CD-RW. Do not write on the CD or CD paper sleeve with
a ballpoint or hard pen as this might damage the CD so that it cannot be read.
Custom labels, such as LightScribe sometimes will also cause problems
with reading a CD. Make sure the
contents on the CD are only the one booth image and the four art images and
nothing else.
The most
reliable CD brands at this time appear to be Verbatim and Memorex.