Guidelines for Digital Images

1. Arrangement

Stereo Pairs must be submitted side by side in parallel format (one image containing the Left image in left side, right image in ride size).  Borders are not required and are not encouraged, unless if you feel that they are needed for the presentation.  We recommend that you use StereoPhoto Maker (SPM) to align your images and adjust the stereo window.

2. Resolution

1920x1080 for each image or 3840x1080 for the side by side stereo pair image. (this is 16:9 aspect ratio, standard HD High Definition image, used in many computer screens and TVs today)

To resize images to this resolution, you can use SPM as follows:

Here is how the SPM resize dialog should look:

If you want to "force" the 16:9 aspect ratio during cropping with SPM, do the following:  Click at the down arrow next to the cropping menu item.  Select "Free Cropping Option".  In the dialog that opens up, select "keep Aspect-ratio" and then enter 16 and 9 for X and Y, as shown in the screens below.  This will force cropping at 16:9 aspect ratio.

Not every picture looks good with a wide aspect ratio. Certain pictures (portraits for example) look better in a more square or narrow aspect ratio.  What happens if the image has a different aspect ratio?  Consider the picture below, which has a narrow ("portrait" type format).  Going through the procedure outlined above, SPM will add black margins to the sides of the image to create a file with the specified resolution.  The top picture shows the original image.  The middle picture shows the image loaded into SPM with the Resize dialog open.  The bottom picture shows the final image with black margins added by SPM to change the aspect ratio to 16:9.  These pictures will project fine, only they will not occupy the entire screen width. 

Note that these margins are symmetric.  This is very important, because in stereo projection the image will be spit in half and R and L parts will overlap.  If the margins are not symmetric, the two images will not overlap properly and the image will be hard to fuse.  Even though you could use other programs to create the black margins (Photoshop, for example) using SPM and using the procedure outlined above guarantees that the margins are symmetric.

3. Naming

Follow this example (this is the complete name, including the extension, but you do not have to type .jpg as part of the name.  Depending on how you have configured Windows Explorer, the .jpg might be invisible to you but added to the full file name):

ThemelisG_Title for 1st Image_1.jpg
ThemelisG_Title for 2nd Image_2.jpg
ThemelisG_Title for 3rd Image_3.jpg

You MUST email your images to me the day before the meeting.  The deadline for emailing is midnight of the day before the meeting (Monday). 

I recommend that you email the images earlier, especially if you want to receive a feedback in case there are technical errors. I am able to view the images in my computer screen and see exactly how they will project.  I will acknowledge all images received.  If you do not receive a reply, there is remote chance that I did not receive your email. Try emailing to verify that I received them.

PostScript:

For those who are curious, here is what is involved in organizing the digital entries (thanks to Paul Gauche for this summary, and also for developing this system):

  1. Get images from attendees
  2. Fix incorrect file names so they work properly in our scoring spreadsheet
  3. Resize incorrectly sized images so they project correctly
  4. After all image files are in one folder, run SPM to create a Slide Show List
  5. Put the Slide Show List into the scoring spreadsheet
  6. Sort the scoring spreadsheet by Class (A and B) and by image number (1-3)
  7. Randomize the order of the images for judging within each Class
  8. Copy the randomized list of file names back into the SPM Slide Show List file
  9. Transfer the new SPM Slide Show List from the scoring computer to the projection computer and run the competition.

Thank you!

George Themelis
Updated 8/26/2012
drt-3d @ live.com