Recent Photo Club Services Changes
April 2012
Council Support for Clubs not using Photo Club Services
If you have a council, regional group, or other organization that accepts
entries into your competitions from other organizations, a new submission
method is now available. The other organizations can use a free website
to upload images from their members directly into your competition.
This is all done via the website menu "Competitions",
"Submit Images to a Parent Organization".
Please refer to the video, accessed via the Help menu, for more information.
Date Joined
You can now save the date a member joined your organization.
The new field can be set via the Manage Members page using the
Edit Membership button. The value is displayed on the membership page
and is in the exported membership list.
Gallery Image Captions
You can now add a caption or note to an image displayed in a Gallery.
These captions are associated with the specific image display within the Gallery
and are not stored with the image. This allows awards associated with an image
to be properly displayed.
The image captions must be added after you have placed all the images into the Gallery.
Use the "Edit Images" link on the "My Galleries" page to list your images in
the Gallery. From there you can edit an entry and add your captions.
If you are creating a Gallery from competition images, you may now specify that the awards
granted in the competitions should be added to the images. There are several options
available for controlling this process.
March 2012
Remote Judging
A new subscription option is being introduced to allow images
to be judged via the organization website instead of using the
Image Competition Manager program. This allows your judges to
be located remotely from your organization meeting or, if you have
Internet access at your meetings, Mac's could use the website
for live critiquing and judging.
Please see the help topic on
Remote Judging
for more information.
February 2012
Galleries
Administrators can now upload images directly into a Gallery when the images
belong to another member. The uploaded images are placed in the referenced
member's library. This ability was already present for uploading images into a competition.
January 2012
Award Sets
In preparation for a major update to the Image Competition Manager (ICM) program in a few months
a new concept is being introduced: Award Sets. Administrators can create
Award Set definitions via the Administration menu. Within each Award Set you
can define any number of awards to be used with your competitions.
This new system provides maximum flexibility for you to name and assign awards
in your competitions.
While you can now define awards and associate them with your competitions, you
will need the new ICM 3 program before they will actually be used. We will
send an e-mail announcement when ICM 3 becomes available.
External Membership List
An organization may now have its own independent membership list which can be
use to automatically grant website membership when a user creates and
a website account and accesses the organization website. This is useful for large organizations,
such as PSA, that want to allow their members to participate in competitions
managed by a Photo Club Services website.
A new button appears on the Manage Users page to "Import External Member List".
Instructions are provided when you click on that button.
December 2011
Personal Website Links
Members may specify a link to their personal website by using the website
menu "My Account" > "My Account Settings". Click "Update Personal Profile"
to update information, including a link for a personal website.
The link appears on the page displayed when you use the menu "Organization" > "Members".
November 2011
New Themes Available
14 new website styling themes have been added to give you more options for
the appearance of your organization website. Change the color scheme of your website by
using the menu Administration, Manage Organization Profile. Try setting the "Organization Site Theme" value to
one of the other theme names.
Most of the differences are subtle, but there are differences. Page layouts are
not changed by the theme.
In addition to setting a new theme, you may now also specify a background image tile
to be used on each page. Unlike the existing Background Image, which appears centered in
the content area of a page, the Background Tile is repeated let to right and top
top bottom to cover all areas of the page, including the header area and margins.
Try the "Transparent" theme, which uses a default photograph to cover most of the page.
If you decide to use a large photograph for a Background Tile, be aware that this
will increase the initial time needed to display the first page. Once the background
image has been downloaded and cached by your browser, performance will improve.
Manage Members Page
Extensive improvements were made to the Manage Members page
to improve performance and usability.
New Maximum Images in Competition Option
You can now specify the maximum number of images allowed in total from
a member organization. This total ignores levels, unlike the existing option.
October 2011
Award Labels and Certificates
New links are now available on the Manage Competitions page. When a Competition
is selected you can use these new links to generate two new reports.
One report generates labels to be used on award ribbons.
The second report generates Award Certificates. Some options are available
for Award Certificates in case you use a pre-printed form.
If you are using award ribbons you might find you prefer certificates as a cheaper
and easier alternative.
Please give these new features a try.
Dues Grace Period
On the Manage Organization Profile page you can specify the number of days that a member can remain
a member after their membership expires.
Image Competition Manager
Some minor enhancements were added to allow judging to start in full screen mode
and to eliminate the blank screen at the start of a show.
September 2011
Optional E-Mail Addresses
Many more people than we expected are sharing e-mail addresses. We use the
e-mail address to prevent the creation of duplicate accounts.
If members insist on sharing an e-mail address, only one account can enter
the e-mail address and the other must use a blank e-mail address.
Duplicate e-mail addresses are still not permitted, but they are optional.
Optional Gallery Owner Display
We found some organizations creating dummy user accounts so they could create galleries
from multiple members and did not want the name of the gallery creator
to display. There is now an option to allow you to turn off the display
of the gallery creator, which should eliminate the need for any dummy accounts.
August 2011
Work in Progress
Behind the scenes we are working a major revision of the
Image Competition Manager and the database infrastructure used by
Photo Club Services. We cannot yet predict the availability of the
new program or take the time to answer questions about this release.
Rest assured that we are working on it and we will provide information
as soon as we can.
Send E-Mail to Competition Participants
There is a new button on the Manage Competitions webpage that will take you
to a new page where you can send e-mail messages to participants in a competition.
You need to select a Competition for the new button to appear.
This feature can be useful for notifying participants that they need to upload a digital
version of their prints for projection, notifying winners, or notifying
participants on their submission status (Accepted or Not Accepted).
Some standard messages have been provided, but you can create your own messages or
save templates that you can re-use.
July 2011
My Image Library Page
The Image History button now displays image use from other organizations and councils.
When the page is first displayed, no images will appear. This is done to speed the
display of the page since users will rarely want a display of all
of their images. The "Quick Display of Recent Images" button is very useful
if you want to see images you recently uploaded.
June 2011
Support for Inter-Council Competitions
If is now possible to create a special organization website to host inter-council
competitions. This is where organization members submit to special organization competitions.
Those entries are forwarded to a Council competition for selection. The selected
entries are submitted by the councils to the special inter-council website
competitions. The originating organization and council names are preserved in the process.
An example of this usage is the FotoClave
competitions held as a join competition
of the Northern California Council of Camera Clubs (N4C),
Central Coast Counties Camera Club Council (6C),
and San Joaquin Valley Camera Club Council (SJVCCC).
May 2011
General Photography Videos
The Education Center now has new videos on Digital Workflow and Camera Raw.
April 2011
Print Competitions
You may now mark Competition Types to be for Prints. This will generate
messages to remind the viewer they are entering or viewing images for
a print competition.
A new video is now available that discusses how to manage print competitions.