[T Paul]

Add your comments, questions or general discussion about the August Contest entries as well as the contest itself here. This is also a great place to share your techniques or ask others about theirs.

[soleah]

Originally Posted by T Paul

This time, PM me with your votes starting 25 Aug.

Much better!!!

Maybe in future contest, we could also use "Blind voting" in which a number is assigned to an entry instead of the user name to add an element of surprise. I think this was suggested in the March 05 contest.

If somebody would come up with a solution in order to make it easy for TPaul?

[Jaime]

Originally Posted by soleah

Much better!!!

I agreed with Soleah. As I said earlier, I believe the public voting has some inconveniencies.

[Cameraken]

Batch Rename

If somebody would come up with a solution in order to make it easy for TPaul?

http://www.trimoon.com/html/batch_rename.html

Ken

[Kraellin]

Paul,

i see nothing in the rules this time that you have to enter to vote. rules change or simply an omission?

Craig

[T Paul]

The goal of these contests is to generate discussion, ideally tips and suggestions on how to improve your images as well as learning from others’ techniques.

Doug would also like to keep the contests very simple and basically let them run themselves as much as possible without increasing the workload. This is especially important as the contests grow in size. So each person submits their entry and the participants then vote on the images. The forum software is not set up for a contest where submissions would be kept anonymous or to be able to let you “View All”, or in that matter to tally votes. As a result, everyone knows who did what and has to view each entry one by one, and I get to tally the votes. We have had volunteers post all the entries to their site in an album fashion that has helped with viewing and is greatly appreciated. As for the anonymous submissions, we had really hoped that it wouldn’t be necessary. There are many other forums that run contests where the entries are not anonymous without any problems. Hopefully with the friendly atmosphere here, this will not be an issue.

In addition, I was thrilled to see participants helping each other with their entries in last month’s contest. I hope this trend continues and more start offering advice in the contests to help others improve their images…if not during the contest, at least after it has closed.


~T

[T Paul]

Originally Posted by Kraellin

Paul,

i see nothing in the rules this time that you have to enter to vote. rules change or simply an omission?

Craig

From the rules:

7. Voting will run from 25 Aug to 31 Aug 2005. Only those with entries may vote. You will vote for the 5 best entries in order. This time, PM me with your votes starting 25 Aug. Note you cannot vote for your own image.

[Kraellin]

ok thanks. i think my head is out of focus...i'll go apply usm at once

Craig

[T Paul]

Oh I wish it was only that easy

[Lorraine]

Not trying to sound ungrateful for the suggestions, but I do truly believe that these contests will be less fun if more and more restrictions of the participants override the original rules and intents of this site.

I belong to another contest site. There, the entries are anonymous. The voting also is anonymous. The individual alone can see how their submission is being voted upon during the voting period. But it costs money and time.

On that site:
You have to pay to enter the contests.
You have only two days to complete your entry.
You're not given an image to work with. You have find your own (and that's difficult unless you want to pay royalty fees for a good high resolution image).
There is not much interaction among participants.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've come back to RetouchPRO.

Lorraine

[chrishoggy]

I know the rules say not to bother with text etc, but I couldn't help myself Wanted to show the design that was in my head

[Caitlin]

Just my two cents about the 'private' voting -

What I guess I found most interesting in the competitions is seeing WHY people liked what they did, but also reading the niggly things they thought could be improved. While it's nice to get praise, I got a lot out of the last July competition by figuring out that a. my background was loved by some and loathed by others, b. I cut her out too sharply, and stuffed up a bit on the right shoulder etc etc. Reading why people liked other entries was interesting too, and seeing how diverse the voting was as well revealling how much this one was about taste. It's good to see WHY people like certain entries that you yourself may not appreciate too. The votes that were just a ranking of 1-5 with names was of no interest to me, similarly the votes that simply praised the top 5 weren't as good a learning process either. All of this is gone if at the end of the month we just get a report back that 1. won, and 2-5 are runners up.

I know that running these kinds of things isn't easy, and can see that there are some disadvantages to the voting process being public and I really applaud all the hard work TPaul and Doug put in, but I thought it was worth giving a bit of feedback on what I see as the 'cons' of blind voting.

[T Paul]

A very good point and I agree whole heartedly. I get the most out of the descriptions added to the voting process. It's a great learning experience to see what is liked as well as what wasn't liked. The private voting is only for this month and will go back to public voting for future contests. Hopefully people will still explain what they liked and didn't like in this month’s contest entries.

[T Paul]

Originally Posted by Shalford

Hadn't got a clue what to do !

Oh well here's mine

For not having a clue what to do, I really like your results! The white space really makes the car standout!

[Shalford]

T Paul
This is where I am clueless.

"You do not have to add type"
Is that "You DO NOT have to add type" or "add type if you want to"
Is a poster an advert?

Anyhow thanks for the comments.
You put a great deal of work into this site, just to say, it is very much appreciated.

Regards

Steve