Dilemma.

I have recently entered a local competition, and have been fortunate enough to

have 2 out of 3 of my submissions go through to the final 50 photos. The

judges have said that they are now in the process of contacting those

photographers individually, in order to inform them where to send their "High

Resolution" files, in order for them to printed to 12"x8", and professionally

exibited in a local art gallery early next year. The problem is, that these

files have to be no larger than 1MB in size. My skills in this department are

still pretty basic, but surely a 1MB file is nowhere near large enough to

print at that size without a fairly substantial loss of quality. Is it?

Is what you've said all they specify? They should clarify what horizontal and vertical dimensions in pixels. Judging the print size I would guestimate 3000x2000 pixels, which would allow a bit more than 240 dpi printing (240x12 by 240x8), but this should be specified. A file of those dimensions in jpeg format could be kept at or under 1MB, without too much compression.

If you take an 8 x 12 image at 300dpi it would be about 25megabytes, but if you then save it

as a jpeg with the "high" setting in photoshop, it should create a file a little under 1 meg

which could be easily sent via email or ftp. In the Mac at least you can "get info" on the file in

the finder and it will tell you the actual size.

Indeed, Stuart. Sounds as if they don't know their business. Or maybe they're counting on

you not knowing their business...? What is their business anyway? Isn't this competition

just a ploy to collect photos without having to pay (copyrights or otherwise)? If they're on

the level they shouldn't be making this kind of mistakes, should they...?

You can send 100MB files for FREE with services like http://www.yousendit.com/, so

there's no reason to want to make files smaller than 1MB.

When, oh when, will the world learn to use the word 'pixels' only?

David has the answer.

 

Make the file 2400x3600 pixels for a 300 ppi, 8x12 inch print. Then convert it to JPEG and adjust the "quality" level to keep the file size under 1 MB. JPEG compression is lossy, but a first generation compression is good enough for this purpose.

I'm with W. Smith on this one. It sounds like a ploy to get control over your images so that they can add them to their collection of images that they sell (or something like that). I'll bet if you read the fine print of the contest rules, you are giving them full and exclusive license to use your images commercially.

 

I don't see why a contest would need both a digital copy as well as a final print. The judging should be done on the print, anyways, since much of the craft of photography is in creating the final print.