Our 2nd themed summer challenge was on the theme "Reflection". The results from this one are: 1st Reflection #2 from John Thom, 2nd "Self-portrait" from Len Findlay and in 3rd place "The first kid on the block with this scene", also from John Thom.

The results from this summer's first photo challenge, on the theme "Repetition", are now out and in first place is Julie Adams with "Straws", in 2nd place is "The Race" from George Hay, and in third place is "Hooks" from Doug Winton.

Here are composites of the entries for the 1st 5 monthly competitions of the Club's 2017-18 season. Click on the images to see larger versions.

There are many ways to sharpen an image in Photoshop (and other photo editors), some are built-in, others need a few steps using Photoshop's tools to get there. Here's one popular method, "Luminosity Sharpening", as described by Club member George Hay (the main benefit of this particular method is that it can reduce the coloured halos around edges that other sharpening methods produce). This should work with any Photoshop version from CS onward, but not with Photoshop Elements.

1. Open the image in Photoshop.
2. Image should be in RGB Mode (it almost certainly will be, but you can check under the Image and Mode menu).
3. Apply an Unsharp Mask (Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask) using the settings, Amount: 125, Radius: 1, and Threshold: 3 (you change the values to your own preference, these are a good starting point).
4. After applying the sharpening go to Edit Menu and choose Fade Unsharp Mask.
5. Ignore the Opacity slider and change the Mode Pop-up Menu from Normal to Luminosity. By doing this the sharpening is only applied to the Luminosity areas of your image. Click the OK button to apply the sharpening.

You can make the above technique into an Photoshop action making it easy to apply it on every image you process.

[Editor's note: For anyone using Affinity Photo instead of Photoshop, the steps are the same except that "Amount" in the "Unsharp Mask dialog is named "Factor" and the "Fade" option is under the "Layer" menu. Notice that for either program you must select "Fade" immediately after applying the "Unsharp Mask"]

These are the results of the "one photo" challenge where members receive a set of digital images and are asked to produce their own interpretations of them. (I know, the title says "one photo" but we've expanded it to 5 images now as the previous events were so popular). So, here are the original images - as a single composite.

And here are what the members did with these - click on each to see a larger version.

The results of the 6th themed challenge, "Urban", are now out and in 1st place "Inspired Shopping Centre" by Len Findlay, in 2nd place "Going My Way?" by Doug Winton and "High Rise" and "NESC" from George Hay and in 3rd place "Y'ain't seen me, right" from Alistair Birnie. These winning photos are shown below, click on them to see larger versions.

The results of the 5th themed challenge, "Connections" were, in 1st place, Doug Winton with "connecting to the world on 21 megs." and in 2nd place, "Pick a number" from Len Findlay. The top 2 photos are shown below, click on them to see larger versions.