Feedback for the Photoshop Competition

Penn

Hey folks,

As some of you have probably noticed, interest in the Photoshop Competition seems to have dwindled in recent months. Where we used to get over two pages of entries and three or four suggestions, now we barely get a page of entries and some weeks have no suggestions at all.

The competition has been running for a while now so it's understandable some may have gotten bored of it. Us mods have been discussing it and we have a few ideas on how to change things up and maybe get a bit of interest back into it. Before we bring these ideas to you, does anyone have any ideas or suggestions themselves on how to get more interest in it or how to change it to make it better, or even if you wish to discuss any problems you see with the competition in its current form and how we can work on that.

Cheers.

niallon

Wish I could think of something as I'm quite a champion of the comp but it does just seem as though interest has wained. It was massive when it was new but it's seriously fallen off.

One idea, but it does seem counter productive, is that maybe it shouldn't be weekly? I know the idea is to generate more regular interest but it can't be avoided that some weeks, sometimes a few weeks consistently, the images available aren't the best to work with.

That's nothing against the posters that are suggesting these images, it just the case that there may not be any relevant images of good potential online on a given week.

Maybe a criteria that images in the Suggestion Thread must get a minimum of X thanks to determine whether the comp goes ahead.

I'll be honest, I've just finished this spiel and it makes less sense to me already.

tenandtracer

Just to echo Niallon's comments, image size and quality is important. If it is a low res or small sized image it makes it difficult.

Would a leader board help, i.e. sum up all the "thank yous" per person on a weekly basis? Yeah I know, that's a lot of work.

.Henry Sellers.

Possibly that the winner each week must submit a suggestion for the week after next so that the winner will have one week to find an image. This would provide at least one image for the suggestion thread each week. Novelty prizes like Boards.ie mug at Christmas for a year round up photoshop competition, something like a fiver to enter and all entrants fees go to Santa strike force. Show your donation reciept for entry into the comp.

niallon

tenandtracer wrote: »

Would a leader board help, i.e. sum up all the "thank yous" per person on a weekly basis? Yeah I know, that's a lot of work.

Or to follow on from this, what about a monthly winner? Cumulative thanks across four/five comps? Anyone with a competitive streak would be compelled to constantly enter to keep their total up rather than posting one week then going dark for a while (as I'm quite guilty of)

Yes I do say this as someone who has come second quite a lot and would possibly have won if it had been based on monthly totals!!!

But having winners stand with only a maximum of 11 champions a year would add a bit more gusto to the act of winning the comp. I can't be the only one who's still madly clamouring for a win!

Weevil

I think some of the suggestions are pretty good, and would love to see some kind of running score to keep us all engaged. I have a feeling most of us are pretty competitive; in the best possible way, of course.

P.S. The P/S thread is one of my favourite things on Boards, and most of the posters to it are both creative and hilarious.

vicwatson

I have to say that I hope I don't witness the demise of this thread as It's one of my favourite on boards.

I wish I could contribute sometimes but haven't got photoshop and the likes but absolutely love the contributions.

Long live the Photoshop Competition !

RobertFoster

vicwatson wrote: »

I wish I could contribute sometimes but haven't got photoshop and the likes but absolutely love the contributions.

Perhaps this is one of the problems. What if instead of it just being a Photoshop competition, it could be a Photoshop / Caption / Speech Bubble Competition? That way there might be more entrants. If the caption or dialogue is funny enough it should get the thanks too.

niallon

RobertFoster wrote: »

Perhaps this is one of the problems. What if instead of it just being a Photoshop competition, it could be a Photoshop / Caption / Speech Bubble Competition? That way there might be more entrants. If the caption or dialogue is funny enough it should get the thanks too.

Whilst I agree there's possibly people holding back under the illusion their entry is "inferior" or that, captions etc will just lead to an overwhelming amount of posts. May not necessarily be a bad thing but could turn the thread into a behemoth filled with posts to be trawled through.

Weevil

niallon wrote: »

Whilst I agree there's possibly people holding back under the illusion their entry is "inferior" or that, captions etc will just lead to an overwhelming amount of posts. May not necessarily be a bad thing but could turn the thread into a behemoth filled with posts to be trawled through.

I agree. A caption thread could easily turn into a meme thread (says someone who has entered a meme!).

Justin Credible Darts

only new here and love the idea of this, hope it can pick up again.

4AV

Son Of A Vidic

Rather than having a photo nomination thread. Let users introduce their own photos to the competition. But they must of course post the original photo before is has been shopped. Basically a before and after post.

Of course normal rules should apply RE: size of pics, no real violence, no porn, ect, ect. I think this approach would reinvigorate the thread. Because it gives posters a little bit more artistic freedom, as opposed to being limited to a specific theme of the week.

Synode

Being able to follow the thread (continuosly, not each week) would be a big help. I always forget to come in and follow the new thread

Penn

Thanks for the feedback so far, folks.

RobertFoster wrote: »

Perhaps this is one of the problems. What if instead of it just being a Photoshop competition, it could be a Photoshop / Caption / Speech Bubble Competition? That way there might be more entrants. If the caption or dialogue is funny enough it should get the thanks too.

We accept any modification to the images in any way, even just putting some text, captions, speech bubbles. It's the humour we're looking for as much as photoshop abilities. We could perhaps make that more clearer though so I might throw it into the standard rules.

Corvus Maximus wrote: »

Rather than having a photo nomination thread. Let users introduce their own photos to the competition. But they must of course post the original photo before is has been shopped. Basically a before and after post.

Of course normal rules should apply RE: size of pics, no real violence, no porn, ect, ect. I think this approach would reinvigorate the thread. Because it gives posters a little bit more artistic freedom, as opposed to being limited to a specific theme of the week.

One of the ideas we came up with ourselves is to do it sort of like Cracked.com's Photoshop Competition. Where instead of being given an image to photoshop, it's a theme or general idea, though with this being Boards the ideas could be largely more Irish-centric than theirs. Examples could be "What Enda Kenny wants for Christmas", "What Irish celebrities will be dressing up as for Halloween" and stuff like that, as well as some film or tv related ones. Suggestions for themes could still be voted on and could be more random than coming up with picture suggestions.

Synode wrote: »

Being able to follow the thread (continuosly, not each week) would be a big help. I always forget to come in and follow the new thread

That's a great idea actually. I'll start implementing that from next week.

Keep the feedback coming, folks. It's appreciated.

tenandtracer

Penn wrote: »

One of the ideas we came up with ourselves is to do it sort of like Cracked.com's Photoshop Competition. Where instead of being given an image to photoshop, it's a theme or general idea, though with this being Boards the ideas could be largely more Irish-centric than theirs. Examples could be "What Enda Kenny wants for Christmas", ".

That would work, very nicely indeed!

Justin Credible Darts

just to clarify, I used a pic earlier in the thread which was not one of the royal pics to manipulate but a royal pic of my own, did i go outside the rules ?

niallon

Justin Credible Darts wrote: »

just to clarify, I used a pic earlier in the thread which was not one of the royal pics to manipulate but a royal pic of my own, did i go outside the rules ?

I'm open for correction but as it stands at the minute, you're Photoshop principally has to incorporate one of the suggested images, but that can be say using a single item from said image and shopping it into another. So once there is a connection to the suggestion you're good

Penn

Justin Credible Darts wrote: »

just to clarify, I used a pic earlier in the thread which was not one of the royal pics to manipulate but a royal pic of my own, did i go outside the rules ?

Yeah as niallon said, once the pic you used is still within the theme of the competition, it's generally okay. I think if we were to be that strict with the rules, the competition would be less fun and too restrictive.

BQQ

Don't know how workable this might be, but I think some sort of delayed voting could help. ( maybe a poll after a certain number of entries/days).

At the moment, posts down at the bottom of the thread have little chance of winning as they have less views and therefore less thanks.
As a result, I think a lot of people don't bother posting if there are 9 or 10 posts already.

Jet Black

vicwatson wrote: »

I have to say that I hope I don't witness the demise of this thread as It's one of my favourite on boards.

I wish I could contribute sometimes but haven't got photoshop and the likes but absolutely love the contributions.

Long live the Photoshop Competition !

You don't really need Photoshop. I've made some good entries and won it before with ms paint. It does take more time. I think cs2 is still free and its a skill worth learning. I've been using it to restore old photos. I've only recently started using Photoshop so hopefully start contributing again.

Maybe if someone could edit the images so people that don't have Photoshop could enter?

If Photoshop is still free start a new thread in CVPL about it and what it can be used for with a couple of beginner vids and before and after pictures.

Here's were I got the free version. On mobile so not sure if its still free.

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=cs2%5Fdownloads&pid=4485850

BooYa

Sometimes an extremely topical and photoshopable picture is posted in suggestions, but it may be a full week until its up next for shopping...by which time the moment has past/other photoshops have appeared around the net of it etc.....I reckon in those instances, whatever photoshop comp is running, the new photo should be added to it/second thread started so the creative ideas can come in straight away.....waiting a week sometimes give he feeling of "old news" by the time it comes round.....the moment has passed somewhat.

jesse pinkman

Hide the thanks?
Don't know if it's even possible, it would be an interesting experiment either way, see I have this sneaking suspicion (crazy theory really) that people follow like sheep, that when they see the thanks being loaded on to some particular posts that it's more enticing to thank them same posts as well, whereas if you could hide the results until Penn came back to reveal all on a Sunday, it might lead to there being a bit more of an air of excitement & anticipation, even some surprise about whichever is the winning post. Then quite simply reward the mystery champion by lavishing upon them much gold, charlie & courtesans of their ilk.

Penn

jesse pinkman wrote: »

Hide the thanks?
Don't know if it's even possible, it would be an interesting experiment either way, see I have this sneaking suspicion (crazy theory really) that people follow like sheep, that when they see the thanks being loaded on to some particular posts that it's more enticing to thank them same posts as well, whereas if you could hide the results until Penn came back to reveal all on a Sunday, it might lead to there being a bit more of an air of excitement & anticipation, even some surprise about whichever is the winning post. Then quite simply reward the mystery champion by lavishing upon them much gold, charlie & courtesans of their ilk.

Sadly, as far as I know there's no way to implement that. You can have forums that have no thanks function, but you can't have forums where the thanks can be hidden, and especially not for individual threads.

rotun

In that case, amount of votes by pm to a forum Moderator instead of using Thanks as the counter?

Penn

rotun wrote: »

In that case, amount of votes by pm to a forum Moderator instead of using Thanks as the counter?

Ha, I''ll definitely have to nix that one straight away. Aside from the logistics and time required for counting the votes (some weeks I get it hard enough to find time to do the comp without that), I'd say it could put a lot of people off voting altogether, as sending a PM takes longer than clicking the thumbs up. Plus if I or one of the other mods are getting dozens of PMs just for votes some other personal or mod related PMs could get lost in the mix.

There could be another solution though. Possibly something along the lines of using a private poll rather than thanks. I'll have a think about it in the meantime, see what I can come up with.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Can we have some more useful photos?

There's only so much you can do with a guy standing (i.e. Trump, the Enda Kenny one, so on)

The guy in the armchair was a good one though - and there was much more quality and variety amoungs the entries. especially mine...!)

jesse pinkman

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

Can we have some more useful photos?

There's only so much you can do with a guy standing (i.e. Trump, the Enda Kenny one, so on)

The guy in the armchair was a good one though - and there was much more quality and variety amoungs the entries. especially mine...!)

If only there was some kind of Photoshop Picture Suggestion Thread were we could actually suggest some images.

M.T. Cranium

I like the thread, it ain't broke, don't fix it. As to the late entries not standing a chance, this is why I post late, so I can hide behind that reasoning and not face the searching questions of why my entries suck.

Seems that this thread gets renewed about once a week on or about Sunday, so that should make it fairly easy for would-be contestants to show up by middle of the week and have a few days of review time. But the whole point is in the fun of producing something, I honestly don't know what would get a lot of thanks because not living there, half the time I don't get the total point of the humour, mind you, Donald Hair was easy to follow, we've got one just like him.

Oblomov

The winner to choose a topic, from a pre selected list, political, Sport, Films, etc, and a sub menu of either characters or a theme, i.e. Film title, TV, sports man or woman and an characterisation of the person "nickname".. John terry at Chelsea... for ... what ever his off pitch antics dictate.

makes the selection more topical and across a greater number of options.

The winner to select but misses that competition as winner, giving the "next best" a chance and stops the same person winning, also stops picking a known image to suit their needs.

marking... scores... How do you achieve a fair and neutral voting system, submissions to be anonymous... and by poll. Of course, people will guess individuals style and taste.

Ban the use of repeated images, Keanu reeves for example, a very easy cop out. throw out the title photoshop and call it something like Rogues gallery..

A panel to award a second place as a recommended for ..originality, use of colour, special effects.. a whole list of special effort, not necessarily the winner by poll count. Gives a greater incentive to take part and, hopefully, evens out the competition.

Just a couple of ideas.

hullaballoo

If you un-sticky the threads, people might actually read them. Just saying.

rolliepoley

Why not let the winner of each week have a choice of a picture or a theme, and as a prize for being the winner they have to host the next thread?

smash

wthax now points to imgur. Might be worth pointing people at http://postimage.org/ instead

LEIN

Hi guys and gals, interest has seriously dropped off in the comp yet again.
Is there any scope to continue or should we call it a day?

We are open to suggestions of improvement or even something new to replace the competition in its current form?

Into The Blue

There's a tendency to scroll past stickeys.. Might be worth unstickeying for a while?

(Both feedback thread and comp thread)

ScumLord

I wouldn't have it changing weekly. I've been caught out once or twice by that. By the time I get around to making an entry the competition has moved on. That would turn me off attempting anything, what's the point if I'm going to miss the deadline?

Maybe have a monthly theme and introduce a new relevant photo each week to inspire people.

Is it possible to put a thumbnail on that thread so when you enter the forum you can see what the theme is?

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Personally speaking, I haven't really had ideas.

This is nothing to do with the competition or the pictures, though: sometimes I look at the photos and nothing comes.

Oblomov

The possibility of a handicap system to slow down the constant winners. Choice of next subject to the winner but they cannot participate in their chosen article.

Gives other people a chance to shine. hidden voting to stop people following success...

Judging panel for different elements, Humour, originality, artwork, interpretation, topicality.....

a Junior prize to encourage the younger element

a start submission date, entries posted by when a set number is reached release. open all entries.... Stops early bird killing the votes.

choice of subject, political, festive, in line with local events, artwork famous people, newly released films, TV series.... from drama, comedy, travel, the choice is endless.

Right, that#s all the brainstorming for the moment

The absurd, design a flag....

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

It's also a bit disheartening when you judge on the number of thanks in the psot (fair enough and a good idea, don;t get me wrong) but then the original image gets more thanks than every entry combined....

LEIN

Thanks for the feedback guys all is being considered.

Slydice

Xaracatz

LEIN wrote: »

Thanks for the feedback guys all is being considered.

How about (especially if the time is reduced from weekly) holding back entries for a few days, and then releasing them together.

I've never submitted an entry, as I wander in infrequently, but it often seems to be that the earlier entries get the most votes (like the first decent comeback on an AH thread often gets the most thanks). That can be discouraging for a competition.

Could also release entries without the posters identified - to be identified later. But that might be a bit too much hassle.