This page describes a program which is designed to simplify the creation and running of a Digital Images contest by the typical small photo club. The digital contest viewer will set up the contest, run the contest for presentation and judging, and record the results for later analysis.
A contest is made up of one or more "categories" in which members submit "entries". After projecting the entries, a judge attaches "awards" to one or more entries. A contest can be among more than one "club".
This version of the program is freely available for use by those (very) few of us who run photo club digital contests. There aren't many of us and we don't have much money, so there's no fortune to be made here. All I ask is that you let me know (at mrj@bcreek.us) if it fits your needs and any ideas you may have how the program could be improved to better fit the way you run your contests.
The program will run on a Windows PC (2000, XP or Vista). Sorry, no Mac version. It assumes a minimum screen (ie. projector) size of 1024x768, but will run on a larger one. The program is designed to be runnable from a thumbdrive, so it consists of a pair of program files which reside with the contest data and images in a single file folder.
Contest setup provides tools to:
The contest is run in three phases:
Results Recorded:
The program can handle up to 8 categories, 8 different awards, and 8 clubs. A pre-defined set of categories and awards is provided, which can be edited to conform to the practices of different clubs.
The remainder of this page describes how to use the program and the formats of data produced.
Add and change contest entries
SETUP
Download a copy of Digicontest by clicking on the button at the top of this page. You'll get a zip file containing the programs (Digicontest.exe and Resizer.exe) and a copy of these instructions (readme.htm) which you can view with your browser.
IF YOU HAVE AN OLD COPY LYING AROUND FROM A PREVIOUS CONTEST PLEASE THROW IT AWAY AND GET A NEW ONE. Bugs do crop up from time to time, and this is the only way you'll be sure of having the latest version.
If importing an archive from MPPA or SVPC, see below for detailed instructions.
Otherwise, create a new folder wherever you want to build the contest - on your local hard drive or on a thumbdrive. Unzip the downloaded files into the folder. This will be called the "contest folder" from now on. It will contain all of the programs, images and data for the contest.
Launch (double-click on) the copy of Digicontest.exe which you just made in the contest folder. This is the copy you will use to run this contest. The program will open and present the Main window, with the Setup window open.
The Setup window provides an area in which you can enter a title for the contest, name the judge, and define the categories, awards and clubs.
The title and judge are entered (or modified) in the text boxes.
The right side of the window contains options for the sequence of the slideshows. Below there is a field for the entry of a "tag" name to be optionally applied to entries. See The Tag Field below for more details.
The current lists of categories, awards, and clubs are shown on the screen. Each may be modified by clicking on the "Edit" button below the list.
The categories and awards editors will each present a list of eight possible selections to choose from. You may either select from the default names provided or overtype the entry names and/or titles with your own selections.
To include a selection in the contest the checkbox in the first column to the left of the row should be checked. To remove a choice simply uncheck the box. If the checkbox is greyed, then that entry is already in use in the contest and cannot be removed or renamed.
The second column defines the order in which the categories and awards will be shown in the slideshows. These are only shown for active entries, and the sequence may be changed by overtyping the number with the desired position.
Each category and award has two names - a long title used in slideshows and a short name used to identify that option (and save screen space) in menus and listings. For example, one of the default entries has the short name "AM" and the long title "Award of Merit". The short name for each active entry must be unique, and the short name for categories is also used as the name for the disk directory containing the entries, so must follow the rules for a directory name and not include any of the characters " * / : < > ? \ |
For each category you may also select the inclusion or not of title slides before and/or after each image in the entries slideshow. The drop-down selection to the right of each line allows selection of a slide naming the image and/or the maker for each entry, to be shown before or after the image.
The club names have only a single version, and like the awards and categories may be entered or changed by typing in the boxes. Active clubs for the contest are selected by the checkboxes in the first column.
Each of the editors are dismissed using the "Close" button in the bottom right. None of the changes made are permanently applied until the "Save" button on the main Setup screen is clicked. Clicking "Cancel" on the main screen will undo all of the changes made since the Setup window was opened.
This window may be re-visited to change these settings, but you cannot remove or rename any category, award or club which has active entries.
Click "Save" to save the changes or "Cancel" to discard them.
NAVIGATING THROUGH THE PROGRAM
The program consists of several windows:
Help is available in most windows by clicking on the blue "?" in the top corner.
Non-fullscreen windows may be moved by dragging near the top edge of the window.
Moving the mouse pointer over a button will bring up a short description of the function of the button.
ADDING AND MODIFYING ENTRIES
From the Main window, click on the "List/Edit Entries" button to view, edit, or add entries to the contest. A window will appear listing all of the current entries.
If the "Resizer.exe" file has not been included in the contest folder, then the first column of the line describing an entry may contain **OVERSIZE**. This indicates that the image for that entry is larger than the projector (currently fixed at 1024x768 - to be settable in a future version). If such an image is presented in a slideshow, then only the top left part of the image which fits the screen will be visible.
Click on an existing entry to change or delete that entry, or the button at the top of the screen to add new ones.
In either case, a window will appear allowing you to enter (or modify) the entry’s title, maker or club, to select a (different) category, or to select a jpg file containing the new (or replacement) image. An optional "flag" value may optionally be used to attach a tag to the entry. The selected file will be copied into the contest folder when the entry is saved. Click “Cancel” to exit the window without saving changes.
You may click on the "Shuffle" button to re-order the entries if for any reason the sequence is not to your liking. (Occasionally the randomizing will result in clumping of entries for one maker or club.)
RUNNING THE CONTEST
Launch the viewer (Digicontest.exe) from the contest folder. The program will load the files and show the Main window. The Main window has the following choices for running the contest, which are used in this order:
Show Entries
Run a slideshow of all of the entered images, with title slides for each category (if more then one) and title slides before or after each entry if selected in the category editor of the setup window.
Advance to the next slide by clicking the mouse or pressing any key. Exceptions are ESC, which will exit the show, or any of Backspace, Up, Left or PgUp, which will return to the previous slide. Advancing beyond the last slide will return you to the Main window.
Judge
Show the judging screen, which displays entries 12 at a time for a single category. To page through the entries, if more than 12, use the up and down buttons to the left of the entry numbers. (or the PgUp and PgDn keys).
To assign an award to an entry, click on the thumbnail image. A banner will appear listing the awards and other actions. Click on the name of the award or action to assign each. Only one award may be assigned to an entry.
To show an image at full size, click on the thumbnail and click the appropriate line of the banner, or press the spacebar. Return to the judging screen by clicking anywhere or pressing any key.
An entry may be "excluded" by clicking the appropriate banner. Excluded entries will not normally be shown on the screen, so the judge can remove entries until just the best ones remain before adding awards. When entries are excluded, a count of the exclusions is shown in the page heading, together with a button which will reshow all entries, or if shown, hide the exclusions again. While shown, an excluded entry may be "unexcluded" by clicking the entry and selecting the appropriate banner, or selecting an award for the entry. An entry cannot be both excluded and awarded.
To change Category, use the Left and Right buttons in the top left corner of the screen, beside the category name.
Press F1 to show a status window with the categories and awards presented so far. Press "any key" to remove it.
Exit from the judging screen using the button at the top of the screen or the ESC key.
Show Awards
Run a slideshow of all entries for which an Award has been assigned. Precede each slide with a description of the award, and the caption and maker of the entry.
Operation of the slideshow is identical to the Show Entries phase.
Exit
You're Done.
THE "Manifest.csv" FILE
When the program exits, there will be a file called "Manifest.csv" in the contest folder. It is a standard comma-separated-values file which may be directly read by Excel and contains all information about the contest, including a list of all of the entries and the awards which were assigned to each.
If the program is started in a folder which already contains a valid "Manifest.csv" then the state of the contest will be restored.
Manifest.csv is a comma-delimited file with one line for each of the competition entries. The entries are preceded by a few lines which contain other information about the contest, such as the categories included, the title of the contest, etc. Each is clearly labeled. Following a line with the single word "Entries" are a line for each entry in the contest. The columns of each entry line are:
It is STRONGLY recommended that any further analysis be done with a COPY of this file. If the file in the contest folder is modified then all information about the images in the contest may be lost. To guard against this, it is marked "read-only".
It is also recommended that following the contest a zip archive of the resulting contest folder be saved as a permanent record of the contest.
Installing with the zip archive from SVPC or MPPA
The "contest folder" can be built from the zip archive produced by the webtools used by the Sunnyvale Photo Club (and the PACC and MPPA)..
To install, unzip the downloaded zip file to your hard drive, or a thumbdrive, to produce the contest folder. The folder is named Zdirmmmnnnn from the SVPC website or Shownnnnnn from the PACC website. Drop copies of Digicontest.exe and Resizer.exe from the digicontest zip into this folder. Launch this copy of Digicontest.exe and proceed as described above.
The folder produced from the zipfile is expected to contain the following files and folders:
One folder for each category in the contest, with names corresponding to the contest categories. These folders contain the .jpg images entered into the contest.
anything.txt - one or more text files containing descriptions of the images in the contest.
field 1 - maker
field 2 - filename
field 3 - category/folder (assumed to be the same)
field 4 - caption
field 5 - club (optional).
The first time the program is run, the text files are used to build the initial Manifest.csv file. They are not used thereafter.
The Tag Field
There arose a requirement from MPPA to mark the entries presented at the contest meeting ("Walk-ins") to distinguish them from those arising from club competitions. The has resulted in the appearance of an "Optional Tag" box in the setup screen.
Entering a short name (eg. Walk-in) in this box will result in a checkbox appearing in the "Add Entries" screen labeled with the name. If this box is checked when an entry is saved then the name is inserted in column H of the manifest.csv row for this entry. Otherwise it is left null.
Copyright Martyn Joyce 2007-2010. v2.3