Preparing your artwork for online submission

Please take your photographs, with your camera set on high image quality. Do this before covering your piece with glass to avoid reflections or glare. It’s best to shoot before framing anyway, as the frame should not show in the picture. Shoot square onto the art – either by laying it on the floor and standing on something high enough to get the whole image, or holding the camera at the same angle as the piece so that the sides line up with the camera frame. Shoot in natural daylight (preferably outdoors on a cloudy or overcast day) rather than using flash.

There’s a very clear tutorial video on how to photograph your art here.

Save your image as a .jpg. The shortest side should be set at at least 1280 pixels and the final ‘weight’ of the image cannot exceed 4 megabytes (4mb) or Smarter Entry will not be able to accept it. (Note this is much larger than previous uploads have required and will allow jurors in future shows to see more texture and nuance when making selections.)

There are many tutorials at youtube.com that will show you how to resize your images once you have downloaded them to your computer. If you need to learn, enter in the search box on the youtube page: “How to resize images on [Windows8 or Windows 7 or Mac 10.5 or whatever operating system you use]. Additionally, if you’re on a mac and do not have photoshop, below are directions on how to crop and resize in Preview. If you do have photoshop, whether mac or Windows, set your image size to 2000px on the longest side and then either “save for web” as a .jpg with the compression set at 100, or ‘save as’ JPEG at ‘maximum’ setting. That should result in a file under 4mb. If it is too high, slide the compression slider back a a little at a time or reduce the size slightly rather than the quality.

Cropping and resizing with Mac Preview

If you have a mac, you have Preview. Here’s how to use it to crop and resize your artwork photograph for uploading:

Go to Applications/Preview and open the program.

Open the photo from your camera in Preview (If it’s not in your ‘dock’, find it in Applications/Preview

  • Click View/Show edit toolbar if it is hidden
  • Select the crop toolScreen Shot 2014-12-16 at 4.54.10 PM
  • Drag it diagonally from one top corner to the opposite lower corner of your artwork – not the frame or any backing materials – just the art. Click to crop.
  • Go to Tools/Adjust size:
  • Set Resolution to 72
  • Set longest of length or width to 2000
  • Click OK
  • Save your new image wherever you want to store it.
  • Upload it to Smarter Image.