Projectionist Information

PROJECTED DIGITAL IMAGES
Version 2, February 2010

1 INTRODUCTION
This note refers to and recommends certain standard settings for the Club digital projection equipment and for Members’ digital image files.
2 BACKGROUND
Many of us have probably been disappointed and surprised at times with the way our valued digital images have appeared on projection. Next generation digital projectors of higher resolution are now coming into use and it is now appropriate to review and set standards which will hopefully address these weaknesses.
The Club standards conform to the standards adopted by the PAGB which are described in detail in their document entitled “Projected Digital Images: Standards for Events” at http://www.pagb-photography-uk.co.uk/misc-pdfs/standards_final.pdf. Using these standards, the PAGB sets out to achieve a “fair & common representation of the authors’ submitted images”. A sRGB colour space is recommended by the PAGB because it “is likely to lead to fewer errors by authors”. File type can be tif or jpeg but of course the latter is already widely used by our Members.
3 PROJECTOR & COMPUTER
The Club will be projecting images with a Canon Xeed XS7 projector driven by a Dell Studio XPS 64 bit laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium. The projector has been calibrated to the Club projection screen within the West Charleton meeting hall.
4 PROJECTOR SETTINGS
The standard settings for club projection will be:
• Pixel dimensions = 1400 x 1050
• Colour Space = sRGB.
5 FILE FORMAT
Whilst the projector & competition software (part 6 below) will run both tif and jpeg file formats, the Club will run competitions in jpeg.
6 COMPETITION PROJECTION SOFTWARE
The Club is using Film Free Projection (FFP) software (www.filmfreeprojection.co.uk) to manage & project digital competition images. To get the best out of this software it is vital for Members’ image files to conform to the pixel dimension, colour space & format standards and importantly that image title & author’s name are input into the correct info fields in Photoshop.
7 AV
Images incorporated into Members’ AV sequences should be prepared in exactly the same way as individual image files.
8 HOSTING OF BATTLES BY KDDC
When KDDC is host to a photographic Battle the visiting clubs should be advised in good time of our projection standards & asked to submit images as sRGB/1400px max x 1050px max/jpeg & input image titles & author’s name into the Photoshop info fields.
9 NOTES
The appended sheets summarise the settings that should be applied by Club Members to their entries (& to visitors’ battle entries) for projected image competitions and provide a check list for the projectionist.

IMAGES SUBMITTED FOR CLUB PROJECTED IMAGE COMPETITIONS SHOULD CONFORM TO THE FOLLOWING PARAMETERS:

1. Colour Space = sRGB
2. Image Size = Maximum 1400 pixels horizontally; maximum 1050 pixels vertically
3. File Format = jpeg (recommended compression 12 for best quality)
4. Contain Image Title & Author’s Name in info fields

For the avoidance of doubt, DPI/PPI resolution has no relevance; if members wish to set a resolution, set at your own discretion.

Colour Space, Image Size, Title & Author Name may be set in Photoshop as follows:

Colour Space: To convert from your working colour space to sRGB go to
• Edit
• Convert to profile
• In dialogue box, select sRGB IEC61966-2.1 from drop down menu in “Destination Space” box
• OK
Image Size: to resize go to
• Image
• Image Size
• Tick “Constrain Proportions” & “Resample Image” boxes
• In “Pixel Dimension” box, if image is landscape format set width to 1400px (height should not exceed 1050px) or if image is portrait format set height to 1050px (width should not exceed 1400px)
• You do not need to amend the “Resolution” box under “Document Size” but may do so at your own discretion
• OK
Image Title: to insert title go to
• File
• File Info
• In “Document Title” box insert your title & nothing else
• Next enter your author name as below
• Author Name:
• In next box down ”Author” enter your name
• Leave all remaining boxes blank
• Click “OK”
• Finally, save your image as a jpeg file!
Image Title alternative method: if you forget to do the above
• Highlight the jpeg image in windows explorer
• Right click and select Properties
• Click on the second tab called Summary
• Enter Title and Author and click the Apply button
• Close
• If on opening the Summary tab you see a whole list of image detail, width, height, resolution etc, then click on the button marked Simple (toward the bottom of the page) and you will get the page for title and author

PROJECTED DIGITAL IMAGES – PROJECTIONIST

To set up computer and projector:
• Do NOT turn on electricity yet
• Connect coms cable between computer & projector & connect power leads to both
• Now switch on power to both & boot up both
• The projector should auto set itself without instruction
• Check & set, where necessary - zoom, keystone, focus & brightness

Projection:
• If you need to change the way image projection is distributed between laptop monitor & screen:
• Open ATI Catalyst Control Centre to select screen projection as a clone of the laptop (e.g. for a general presentation) or as an extension of the laptop display (for FFP competitions) by right clicking on the desktop & then left clicking on ATI Catalyst Control Centre (Do not use Windows Display Settings).
• In Control Centre dialogue box click Displays Manager to open Displays Properties
• To clone the laptop monitor to the screen, the laptop & monitor icons must be captioned “Main” & “Clone” respectively with an interlinked chain device between them. If they are not, hover the mouse over the monitor icon, right click, check “Clone Desktop 1 with monitor”, & check “Yes” in Displays Manager Notification dialogue box.
• To extend the laptop monitor to the screen (e.g. for FFP projection), the laptop & monitor icons must be captioned “Desktop 1” & “Desktop 2” respectively with two square boxes between them. If they are not, hover the mouse over the monitor icon, right click, check “Extend Main onto monitor”, & check “Yes” in Displays Manager Notification dialogue box.

Check List:
• No further set up action should be required but any of the following might be inspected & reset, e.g. if a visiting speaker has used his/her own settings:
• Projector>Menu>Display Settings: Aspect should be “Auto”; Input signal 1400x1050 & Screen aspect 4:3.
• Projector>Menu>Image Adjustment: Image Mode (i.e. Colour Space) should be sRGB & Contrast, Sharpness & Gamma should all be 0 (zero). The default setting for Brightness is also 0 (zero) but in practice that may be too bright & you may need a setting of – 12 or even lower.
• If the aspect ratio of the laptop monitor is distorted, go into ATI Catalyst Control Centre, as above, select Notebook Panel Properties/Attributes & check “Preserve Aspect Ratio” under Scaling Options.

Film Free Projection:
• These are not comprehensive instructions; refer to drop down “Help” for user manual
• Receive Members’ image files, check they conform to club standards & save in a folder ideally on Desktop
• Check type of competition – Club or Inter Club (for battles) in Toolbar
• Load images either by clicking the third or fourth icon in the Toolbar
• If desired, you can reorder the images by dragging & dropping, shuffle the order randomly with the shuffle button next to the “Score” box or rearrange into any of the orders available in the shuffle drop down list
• Optionally insert title &/or information slides
• If image files and printed running lists are needed for submission to the judge, they can be output by selecting File/Import-Export and File Print – Print Preview – Print Options
• Best to save projection sequence – File/Save sequence as
• Set up the way you want to run the competition in the toolbox on left
• Suggestions for slideshow run through - make Slidechange interval 5 secs & check Show Title with an interval less than 5 secs in Metadata. Run the slideshow by checking the “Project” button & checking “on” in “Automatic Slidechange”
• To run competition for judge’s comments & scoring, hit the score button, select first image on lightbox. Sequence through images with arrow key or mouse. Score e.g. 1 for first place & hit enter. To hold back hit space bar. To project held back images & score check “Held Back only” in Toolbox
• For results, select Scoring/Calculate Results in toolbar. Select “Project report” to show results on screen
• Select Report Options/Save Report to save results

Visiting Speakers:
• If speaker wishes to project using our projector, determine whether the speaker has any special image settings such as colour space and set projector as appropriate.
• Reset projector to club standards at end of meeting & before shutting down computer/projector.