Rules & Guidelines - Photography

The following rules are specific to the photography contests. Make sure to read the carefully before participating. Also make sure to read the more general contest rules.

Entering photography contests on pxleyes is only possible by uploading a digital copy of your work through the "submit entry" button on the contest page.

Keep your pictures as close as possible to what got recorded when you released the shutter. Refer to the following paragraph to learn what kind of editing will be acceptable.

Only use your own pictures. You must be the original photographer of your entry. To prove your authorship, keep the original with exif data to allow for easy verification. You can use any type of camera, analog or digital, to create the original picture.

Photographing the work of others in a 'reproductive' way will not constitute a work of your own in the above sense. If you want to enter a picture of another artist's work, take an "interpretative" picture of that piece which holds its own photographic merit. In any case, credit the original artist in your entry properly.

In general, you should try to avoid editing your photos, whether in camera or with some editing software on a computer. Being a good photographer also means being able to take good shots without having to edit afterwards. We understand that enhancing pictures after the fact has a long tradition in photography and thus we allow for certain digital darkroom techniques, which is readily available in most photo handling software today. As a general rule, you are allowed to all adjustments which act on the whole picture and on exactly one picture (a.k.a. non selective editing). This includes:

• - 6.1.: Level
• - 6.2.: Curves
• - 6.3.: Hue
• - 6.4.: Saturation
• - 6.5.: Color adjustments/shifting
• - 6.6.: Brightness
• - 6.7.: Contrast
• - 6.8.: Gaussian blur
• - 6.9.: Noise reduction
• - 6.10.: Sharpness
• - 6.11.: Crop and rotate
• - 6.12.: Lens correction
• - 6.13.: Camera raw editing
• - 6.14.: Healing brush to remove dust and scratches from a scan or speckles from dust on your camera's sensor
• - 6.15.: Duplicated layers
• - 6.16.: Layer blending modes
• - 6.17.: Transform your photo into HDR
• - 6.18.: Make panoramas
• - 6.28.: Use dodge and burn

As a general rule, you should stay away from selecting, masking or brushing parts of the picture. Tools to avoid are:

• - 6.19.: Brushes in any flavor
• - 6.20.: Clonestamp
• - 6.21.: Patch
• - 6.22.: Masks and any selections (magic wand, marquee, lasso)
• - 6.23.: Adding or moving objects manually
• - 6.24.: Liquify/warp
• - 6.25.: Watermarks or frames and borders
• - 6.26.: Sketchy effects or filters that alter the original photo significantly
• - 6.27.: Copy/Paste

Keep in mind that editing your photos should be kept minor. Too much editing can result in removal of your contest entry. This is a photography contest, not an image manipulation contest. In this sense, even "in camera editing" may be considered illegal by moderation.