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The Crestock Photoshop Contest 2007

Contest home View entries Submit Schedule Rules Judges

Mac Pro with dual 30 inch Cinema Displays

Winners:

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Round 4

Prizes:

		iPod Classic + iPod Nano iPod Classic 80GB for the winner, iPod Nano 4GB for the runner-up Find out who won Round 1 here!

		MacBook 13" White 2.0GHz, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, combo drive International English OS & keyboard Find out who won Round 2 here!

		MacBook Pro 15" 2.2GHz, 2GB RAM, 120GB HDD, Superdrive International English OS & keyboard Find out who won Round 3 here!

		Mac Pro + Dual 30" Cinema Displays The ultimate desktop computer: an Apple Mac Pro with two 30" Cinema displays, providing more than 8 megapixels of screen resolution! Find out who won Round 4 here!

Source Images:

Schedule:

Round 1

Start:
Tuesday 13 Nov
Deadline:
Tuesday 20 Nov
10:00am GMT

Round 2

Start:
Tuesday 20 Nov
Deadline:
Tuesday 27 Nov
10:00am GMT

Round 3

Start:
Tuesday 27 Nov
Deadline:
Tuesday 4 Dec
10:00am GMT

Round 4

Start:
Tuesday 4 Dec
Deadline:
Tuesday 11 Dec
10:00am GMT

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Comments:

By Freezingpictures on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 4:10 PM

Wow great contest! Great prices especially the one of round four! If I would be the winner I would need a new desk :-)

Question?

By Paul C on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 6:10 PM

Do you have to be part of every round or can you wait to enter a later round?

RE: Question

By Jordan on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 6:36 PM

According to the rules, you can participate in any or all, but you only can submit one picture per round.

US only?

By advanced on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 7:19 PM

Is this an international competition?

International and open for all!

By Crestock on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 7:44 PM

This is an international competition and open for all to participate. If you win and happen to live in some exotic or plain godforsaken corner of the globe it will inevitably take us a bit longer to get the prize delivered, but we've managed it before and will manage again.

Can you win more than one round?

By dxhans5 on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 7:48 PM

Just curious if a person can win more than one round or if they win one...they are locked out of the others.

Question...

By jjgraphix on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 7:48 PM

So technically the same person could win every round?

A little confused on whether you have to enter every round or not....

Total

By Connor Burtonq on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 9:18 PM

I have kind of worked out that if someone won all the rounds the prizes would add up to £5,280 or something like that. Am i right?

Me and my friend are working really really hard on this and hope to win =)

Good Luck everyone

Oh boy...

By Raptor007 on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 9:18 PM

The banana next to the mannequin leads to some naughty chop ideas...

ok, i agree

By Rahen McVideolar on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 10:23 PM

ok that can be true but the globe it will inevitably take us a bit longer to get the prize delivered...

Age limit?

By erubel on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 10:40 PM

For the contest, is there an age limit or minimum?

datelus

By saaa on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 10:45 PM

If a winner from europe, do you ship to europe? or thisis just for u.s?

By Crestock on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 10:57 PM

Erubel: there is no age limit for this contest.
Prize delivery: to the US, Europe, Africa or anywhere the winner is located, se the reply above for further detail.

Hmm

By phx on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 11:04 PM

Do you guys care if it's done in Photoshop? I'd consider entering if I could use The Gimp...

I don't see why it should matter, but it is called a Photoshop contest.

Is there a theme?

By Martin on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 11:11 PM

It seemed like the previous set of contests had a theme, does this one? Is the ONLY requirement that we use on of these images?

Theme?

By Crestock on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 11:18 PM

There is no hard and fast theme apart from the fact that all entries will have the same set of images as the starting point.

It is important that on one or several of these images can be recognised as a central part of your design, this is the main qualifying criteria. We are already receiving entries that have nothing to do with the source images, so please make sure that you all read the contest guidelines before you send in your images.

Awesome

By fluksu on Wednesday, 14 November 2007 2:51 AM

This is a great thing you guys are doing. Good luck to everyone who enters!

The Crestock Photoshop Contest 2007

By Spontanus.com on Wednesday, 14 November 2007 7:32 AM

Win great Apple hardware in the Crestock Photoshop contest. Compete over here! ...

Photoshop only?

By gnail on Wednesday, 14 November 2007 9:25 AM

Do we have to use Photoshop? Or does the word "Photoshop" here mean "digital manipulation of images"? Can we use things like Gimp and Inkscape?

Must we only use Photoshop?

By goosey on Wednesday, 14 November 2007 9:48 AM

Are we able to use any applications, tools to produce the final image?

stock images?

By teeceethree on Wednesday, 14 November 2007 11:38 AM

rule 5 states other images are allowed to be used, providing there is no copyright infringements. Does this mean, free stock images, available free of charge from sites such as stockxchng are fine to incorporate, providing they are not the main focus of the image?

Thanks in advance for answering crestock

By Dutchbag on Wednesday, 14 November 2007 2:23 PM

There's really too many people who don't read the rules at all before submitting work...

resolution

By anon on Wednesday, 14 November 2007 5:26 PM

the rules state larger than 1000px but smaller than 6000px but when i view the entries i can only see about 400x600px. The point being I just spent a lot of time on a 2000 x 2000 but the public cant see any of that detail, at 400x600 it just looks mediocre. Now maybe the crestock judges can see the higher res version but others can't unless i am missing something, so if you go for real detail you would lose public votes. I mean whats the point of making a detailed 6000px submission really?? Oh well i will start over and make something 1000px and aim for it to look good at the 400 x 600 res. Just my thoughts...

Use of stock images?

By Crestock on Wednesday, 14 November 2007 6:23 PM

Teeceethree: it is fine to include other imagery in your design, but it is not necessarily the case that you can do whatever you like with an image even if you can download it for free, unless it is specifically marked as 'public domain'. You will have to check the copyright information for the image or website you use to check if there are any usage restrictions put on the images offered.

Only Photoshop?

By Crestock on Wednesday, 14 November 2007 6:34 PM

We do not plan to strictly police that ONLY Photoshop has been used to create the entries – we are not sponsored by Adobe, so there's no hidden agenda in that respect.

Our definition is more along the lines of "digital 2D manipulation of bitmap images", this is what the entries will be judged on. Any entry that ventures too far into vector art or 3D modelling territory is likely to be rated lower by the judges, even if it is not disqualified outright.

use of stock images follow up?

By teeceethree on Wednesday, 14 November 2007 7:04 PM

Thanks so much for getting back to me. I do have a follow up question if you dont mind. Does the following information meet your requirements for being 'public domain' and therefore ok to use? This would be for images from a free stock site, as opposed to googling random web images for example.

"All Images on the Website are copyrighted and they are the properties of SXC or its Image providers. All rights are reserved unless otherwise granted to You. Your rights to use the Image are subject to this agreement and the restrictions specified at each Image.

We hereby grant to You a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Image on the terms and conditions explained in this Agreement and on the Image preview page FREE OF CHARGE.

You may use the Image

* In digital format on websites, multimedia presentations, broadcast film and video, cell phones.
* In printed promotional materials, magazines, newspapers, books, brochures, flyers, CD/DVD covers, etc.
* Along with your corporate identity on business cards, letterhead, etc.
* To decorate your home, your office or any public place.

You may not use the Image

* For pornographic, unlawful or other immoral purposes, for spreading hate or discrimination, or to defame or victimise other people, sociteties, cultures.
* To endorse products and services if it depicts a person.
* In a way that can give a bad name to SXC or the person(s) depicted on the Image.
* As part of a trademark, service mark or logo.
* SELLING AND REDISTRIBUTION OF THE IMAGE (INDIVIDUALLY OR ALONG WITH OTHER IMAGES) IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN! DO NOT SHARE THE IMAGE WITH OTHERS!

Always ask permission from the photographer if you want to use the Image

* In website templates that You intend to sell or distribute.
* For creating printed reproductions that You intend to sell.
* On "print on demand" items such as t-shirts, postcards, mouse pads, mugs (e.g. on sites like Cafepress), or on any similar mass produced item that would contain the Image in a dominant way."

Thanks again for listening.

Can one person be the winner of multiple rounds?

By Nick on Wednesday, 14 November 2007 8:20 PM

This has to be clear, because If not I will hold my participation for the last round. This is to avoid the "hes already won lets give the chance to another contestant".

Thanks!

Resolution

By fark on Wednesday, 14 November 2007 9:00 PM

Any requirements for resolution? in terms of dpi?

buying images

By fark on Wednesday, 14 November 2007 9:13 PM

What if someone buys an image of a stock image website like gettyimages.com, can we manipulate it and use it?

Re: Nick's comment...

By Jody Mitoma on Thursday, 15 November 2007 12:14 AM

I am also interested in this...
Although I've already spent 5 hours on the first round, I've yet to submit my piece... I'm not submitting until the last day... It seems people loooove to steal ideas in this darn contest...

If you can only win once, I am not going for an ipod, when I can win a quad-core mac with TWO 30" monitors..

Thanks.

Re: Nick's comment

By Bookwom on Thursday, 15 November 2007 4:16 AM

I also would like a answer to this.

Where are the rules?

By Doug C. on Thursday, 15 November 2007 5:18 AM

I'm sorry if it's in plain site, but I've checked this whole page and can find no link to the "rules" everyone is speaking of. Where are they?

Great contest!

By deyaz on Thursday, 15 November 2007 7:19 AM

Mac Pro w/ Dual 30" LCDs! that's my dreams..ewww

Can one contestant win multiple rounds?

By Crestock on Thursday, 15 November 2007 3:25 PM

We don't have a rule that says that you can't win several rounds, so if you're lucky enough to be extremely talented AND very lucky, you could win more than once, so don't let this prevent you from participating in the early rounds.

Use of Stock Images

By Crestock on Thursday, 15 November 2007 3:49 PM

We do allow use of stock images apart from the ones we've supplied in your designs – and preferably images bought at Crestock Stock Photos of course!

We should point out however, that the contest rules state that "Modifying, enhancing or altering someone else's artwork (excluding the supplied Crestock stock photos provided) does not constitute an original, valid contest entry."

In last year's contest we did in fact have a situation in the final round where the image in the lead was found to consist predominantly of a photo purchased – in good faith – from an image library. As such it didn't qualify as an "original, valid contest entry", and we really don't want anyone to find themselves in a similar situation this year.

Teeceethree: the usage agreement you list seems to allow use in this contest.

Regarding Typography.

By xsygma on Thursday, 15 November 2007 7:07 PM

It's allowed the use of typography in the compositions? I've read the rules, but there's nothing about it. Thanks in advance. ^^

Direct use of the images?

By Frankie on Friday, 16 November 2007 9:19 AM

Do we have to use the images directly? Or can we just use the themes of the image? Example: Do we have to use that exact photo of a banana or can we use another banana?

Photomanipulation?

By Biscuit on Friday, 16 November 2007 9:35 AM

Do we have to photomanipulate the picture or can we redraw it??

By dcloud on Friday, 16 November 2007 11:17 AM

I uploaded my entry only when I see it on the page there's someone else's name on it. Very bizarre. Any ideas?

Wow !!

By PixlNinja on Friday, 16 November 2007 1:42 PM

gr8 Idea.. Lots of prizes !!!

Fairness/Inspiration

By potential_victim on Friday, 16 November 2007 1:52 PM

By showing the entries before the closing date, this competition is ruined by those cheap idiots who steal ideas. To ensure such a great competition isn't flawed by such poor moderation, show the entries ONLY when votes count. Surely this is obvious?

Re: potential_vicitm's comment above...

By Jody Mitoma on Friday, 16 November 2007 3:03 PM

If you feel you don't want others viewing your final piece, feel free to submit it on the last possibly day.

That is what I am doing...

I've worked on my piece at least 5 hours a day so far, and I've started working on it the very day this contest begun. That may be another reason I don't feel ready to upload my piece just yet, because why upload it now, when there's still 4 days left? I may also go back to my project, and want to change something later. Better safe than sorry.

:)

stop crying

By farazwarsi on Friday, 16 November 2007 4:50 PM

Upload your image now so if people do copy you atleast you get points on originality. At the end of day its about your skill. Graphic designers are the most sensitive insecure people in the world! and im speaking for myselt too lol...

First off, no one is crying...

By Jody Mitoma on Friday, 16 November 2007 5:59 PM

....Secondly, I gave reasons for not uploading it now. Like I said, I may go back to my piece and do some changes or add more to it... I've been adding huge detailed differences everyday, and I know I've got more in me to add. Stop assuming that we're crying.

I AGREE

By Native666 on Sunday, 18 November 2007 6:49 AM

""""""the rules state larger than 1000px but smaller than 6000px but when i view the entries i can only see about 400x600px. The point being I just spent a lot of time on a 2000 x 2000 but the public cant see any of that detail, at 400x600 it just looks mediocre. Now maybe the crestock judges can see the higher res version but others can't unless i am missing something, so if you go for real detail you would lose public votes. I mean whats the point of making a detailed 6000px submission really?? Oh well i will start over and make something 1000px and aim for it to look good at the 400 x 600 res. Just my thoughts...""""""

Why not show the work?

By MTrebbin on Sunday, 18 November 2007 10:02 PM

Why is it so bad to show you work earlier? Then the visitor have more time to choose their favourite ;)

Anyways, if you're afraid that someone might steal your idea: wait. Hope there's no bottleneck-effect when many ppl want to upload within the last few minutes.

Just my opinion: if you're really skilled you don't have to worry at all.

Just my 2ct.

I agree with Mtrebbin ------ Only losers imitate.

By rayvolvez on Sunday, 18 November 2007 10:17 PM

"If you're really skilled you don't have to worry at all."

Even if someone really steals your idea, I doubt he/she can match the execution unless he/she is as pro or more pro.

And honestly speaking, those who steal ideas aren't fit to be called artists or designers because they lack the right conceptualisation skills and ability. So I wouldnt even worry about people who try to steal or mimick ideas, because they can never steal exactly, and if their steal or rip is of a weak and poor standard, then thats when yours really stand out against.

I have had the same thought in an old competition and guess what by the time which was 3 days before deadline when I wanted to submit, someone has already used the idea and so, in fear of being unoriginal, i changed and redid my whole entry. The winner of the competition, ironically, was that particular entry.

I have always been told this. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Funny as it sounds, it is just right.

Let the losers imitate, a real capable skilled artist/designer will never imitate.

My 2cents too.

Size

By Concerned Citizen on Monday, 19 November 2007 12:43 AM

I'm also interested to know what the final size the images will be viewed at. Like someone else stated if you put a lot of detail into your work, is the general public / judges only going to be able to see the small version?

I've also notice a lot of people submitting are not submitting the right sizes. Does that mean they get disqualified?

Dancing with the Stars

By RandyToons on Monday, 19 November 2007 3:22 AM

Who needs to steal and why should I worry about it. I take it as a Personal Challenge. I am going in knowing that there is alot of talent out there. I just want a chance to dance with the rest of you. You all push me to create and to have another piece for my portfolio. And if it so happens that I take home a prize it's an added bonus. So lets all dance.
Good luck everyone!

WOW

By ronadrops on Tuesday, 20 November 2007 8:05 AM

ITS VERY KOOL

Use of images outside of this Contest?

By frankiebiscuit on Tuesday, 20 November 2007 11:14 AM

Are these stock images available to use outside of this contest? If even after the contest is over?

Use of images outside of this Contest?

By Crestock on Tuesday, 20 November 2007 11:37 AM

Thanks for bringing up this question; the images we supply for the contest are only licenced for this purpose, they are not freeware/shareware/public domain.

Should you wish to use these images for any other purpose, you can still purchase a royalty-free licence for all the featured images at a VERY reasonable price. Once the contest rounds end, the thumbnails above will be linked to image preview pages where you can find more information about the photo, the photographer and purchase the image in various sizes, should you wish to do so.

Round 1 closed

By Crestock on Tuesday, 20 November 2007 1:37 PM

Round 1 is now closed for submissions. We are happy to see that apart from a few last-minute technical problems, all of you double-checked your time zone and managed to get your entries in on time.

The only entries not being displayed are those that clearly don't qualify for the contest; un-adjusted photos and photoshop pieces where we have been unable to find any trace of the source images.

Good luck to everybody!

Viewable image size...

By JodyMitoma on Tuesday, 20 November 2007 2:47 PM

Crestock, sorry to bug, however, you have yet to reply to any comments regarding the size of the images viewable to us as members/participants of the contest.

Will the full size images be available to the Crestock Judges?, because as we all know, we (the members) can only see the images about 25% of their fully submitted size.

Please let us know! It'll mean a world of a difference because a lot of our submitions have a ton of detail only visible at a larger scale.

Thanks very much. Good luck to everyone in the first round, including myself, hehe. :)

By Concerned on Tuesday, 20 November 2007 7:41 PM

Going by the way the voting is going on contest one and the commenting under the first placed images, I would suggest the next three contests to be judged only by the jury, anything other than that seems not to be fair.

About the deadline

By thefish on Tuesday, 20 November 2007 7:47 PM

Hi I live in French Polynesia and I saw that the deadline was on the 20th. But today, the 20th I cannot submit my picture for the round 1 but only for the round 2. I think I've work for peanut. Too sad.

Round two stock image question for Crestock.

By 3dcreativesolutions on Tuesday, 20 November 2007 8:14 PM

Is there any info on the maker of the camera? Like manufacturer and whatnot?

By alisommer on Tuesday, 20 November 2007 9:14 PM

This year it's possible to view the entries by upload date or how many votes or how many comments the pics have received so far...and I find it a bit problematic. It seems that people are viewing the images mainly with the "vote-choice" on and so if you haven't got any votes yet...you possibly won't get any. Well that's my observation from the first day of voting atleast.

To Crestock: Do people look through all the images in the "view entries" (therefore prove my first day observation wrong) or do they stop like at the page 3 of any of the viewing choices? Are you able to see "user behaviour" on that bit of your site? I'm just...being curious:)

The voting system is unfair!!

By Non-voter on Tuesday, 20 November 2007 10:06 PM

I think people are looking at the top highest voted photos and voting only those only and not looking further down the list. This is totally unfair for images further down the line. I think the public voting stage should be deemed null and void and as previously mentioned judged purely by jury votes.

Crestock can consider voiding voting system and do a 100% Professioal Judging Process...

By rayvolvez on Tuesday, 20 November 2007 10:29 PM

Seeing and honestly feeling disgusted by how people comment/criticise, I think its best to keep to a 100% professional judging process or reduce the percentage of the public voting. There are signs of votes jacking and votes topping unless the general public / people voting are being dead honest with their taste which is at the moment feeling weird to the general public. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH with whatever thats whined, complained, bashed, slammed on a particular entry. Have no support for the person but a competition calls for dignity, things are turning too ugly. So for fun to last through round 2-4, i strongly suggest that the public voting component to either abolished or percentage reworked. It is too ugly to see other competitors bashing, slamming and losing dignity with whatever they are doing.

Voting, Round 1

By Crestock on Tuesday, 20 November 2007 10:34 PM

We are not so sure that the issue is one of people voting for the entries that already have gained some votes – but there is no doubt that there are some images that have gained surprisingly many votes in a surprisingly short time...

For the time being we are just monitoring the situation, but we would like to ensure all sincere participants in the contest that vote rigging is unfair and not something we tolerate. Getting votes registered by any means possible is not how you win this contest and we have not taken our eye of the ball just because submissions are closed.

Voting System worse then the Presidental Election System!

By Scorndrake on Tuesday, 20 November 2007 10:37 PM

As a fellow designer this vote system will always never work truly as friends of the artist and as stated above the people only vote for what has the most comments and not of the design merit. Saddens me that a lot of talented designs are passed up. Think that no matter what we the artists say crestock like others that base a system will never listen and continue to use a failed system that supports who has the most friends wins campaign. If I wanted to win through my friends I could enlist all in my army company to pass the word to vote and have their families vote and that would show how messed up this system truly is.

This should be judged by a unbiased panel and not by us or our friends and families period. But like I said before no one will listen to the voice of reason when minds are set on one thing!

The Titanic of all voting contests...

By Scorndrake on Tuesday, 20 November 2007 10:48 PM

When you give out one prise per contest what sort of contest you think you will have? This is a highly cut throat contest when you have it set on voting system. When you are giving a prise all could ever want of course you are going to see cheating and vote manipulation. Monitor all you want but when it comes to only a grand prise and no 2nd or 3rd prises it is an all out war for votes to be the winner.

I hope someone does the right decision on this contest.

PLEASE MAKE THIS VOTING FAIR!

By Stop this.... on Tuesday, 20 November 2007 10:59 PM

Stop public voting..... Jury voting only.....

I kicked myself in the arse.

By Kinsbane on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 12:44 AM

I can't believe I missed the deadline when my image was finish, I just brought it into work to do minor touch-ups.

Well, here it is anyway:
http://www.kinsbane.net/temp/30barrels.jpg

You can't force people to look at things a certain way

By 3dcreativesolutions on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 3:01 AM

You just have to hope that most will want to vote and make an informed decision based on looking at ALL the entries. I haven't voted yet because I'm not sure. I have a week to decide and so do tons of others who haven't voted yet and don't want to at this time. The last few days may prove quite amazing once poeple are forced to make a decision after looking at all of these. Everything you see now is still very premature. Anyway, I'll hope that 75% or more are in fact looking at most of the entries. Either way they vote how they want to, not how you think they should :)

Observations

By garykapluggin on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 8:27 AM

I have just looked through the images for this contest and am wondering at the unbalanced voting system here. I see it has already been touched upon in this forum. I see the top scoring images with 50, 60 or even over 80 votes. But looking through all of the other photos there are amazing images that are really outstanding that have not one vote or comment on them, which leads me to believe there is a flaw in the voting system here.

Glad for your reply, Crestock.

By rayvolvez on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 9:15 AM

Your reply does sound reassuring and hopefully things turn out better. And I really hope that public voting is totally taken off as no one or in fact anyone would never spend time going through the 600+ entries and vote, so ultimately, it would never be a fair judgement..

Perhaps, this is what we can do....... Just a fairness suggestion.

By rayvolvez on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 9:18 AM

Just a suggestion. Reset the voting system now (since its kind of jacked up already) and probably make it compulsory that whoever that votes must review all entries, within the 7 days. In other words, his/her votes should not be counted unless that is done. Or.. Make voting a scoring format, means, whoever's that voting, give a score from 1-10 and again makes sure that all entries are scored. I think this is probably the fairest way to carry on from here and that will ensure fairness to ALL PARTICIPANTS.

Wow.

By 3dcreativesolutions on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 12:59 PM

If only you forced people to be informed...sheesh... sounds a little Red me. Why would you want to force someones right to choose their favorite or click a button however and on whichever page they wanted? If they don't look at all the entries, what business is it of yours? I think the voting system is fine and normal. If people would rather vote based on who's at the top, what is the problem? I've never seen such ridiculous suggestions. I haven't seen all the entries, but I've seen enought to know that I shouldn't be forced to look at all 600. Ya'll are going a little too far I think. Politicians lobby, why can't we? The voting skyrocketing problem has stopped anyway. The next 6 days will be greuling and boring, but it looks like some are already envious of who's on top. Maybe another 700 poeple will vote and all the underdog amateurs will win. I guess THEN it would be fair. I hope I'm chatting with adults here, because right now I'm not so sure.

I did.

By buglover on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 1:41 PM

@3dcreativesolutions: I do went through all the 600 pics! :P And I have to agree that the public results (until now) don't seams to be equitable at all.

Friendly voting or cheating will always be a problem at PSCs and the higher the prizes the bigger the problems will be.

Crestock should take care of this. My recommendation: only anonymous posting during competition, no display of comments during the voting, and no votes rated listings. That’s the way they do it at photoshopcontest.com with prized contest and it’s running quite well.

Cheers BL

Honestly speaking...

By rayvolvez on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 2:42 PM

I went through all.. and yes 3d you're one of the top which i voted for.. But there are entries which votes looked jacked up.. which isnt quite a fair issue for many others.. And in fact there are A FAIR NUMBER OF good entries stuck with 1 vote or 0 vote! I don't quite care abt winning, but I feel that there are some who are already disadvantaged at this voting system. A skills contest became a popularity or friendship contest, is it right? and definitely, i'm trying to speak with all logic and sense and like i said, i'm not speaking for myself, because winning and losing isnt that important to me.

That's pretty fair

By 3dcreativesolutions on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 2:46 PM

I agree with you that knowing who's in the lead can influence votes. However, with the previous comments, forcing poeple to look at all entries is just ridiculous. So if Crestock took a few links off the pages, like sorting by comments and votes, maybe that would help a little. But it would not help poeple who get their friends involved to help them have an edge. There's 6 days left and time will tell. For those who think underdogs and unscene beautiful talent gets overlooked due to popularity, obviously you haven't seen round 2 entries. YUCK! ...but good luck anyway :P

My opinion on the voting topic...

By JodyMitoma on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 2:58 PM

Plain and simply, I think we need to get rid of the ability to sort the images by date of upload/votes/comments and leave it at just random. That would solve a ton of problems, guarenteed.

OK Crestock.. the people have spoken :)

By 3dcreativesolutions on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 3:07 PM

Making the voting completely random viewing with no way to sort. I like it.... then we can move on.

Agree with 3d and jody.

By rayvolvez on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 4:14 PM

Get it random. And no more sorting, equal exposure would be great. I think round 2 entries are pretty decent so far.. the bar is much higher than round 1.

Welp...

By 3dcreativesolutions on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 4:37 PM

Well.. I plan on thinking a little longer for round 2 through 4. By thursday I should be able to see what's redundant or retarded and adjust any ideas I may have. So far nothing submitted is remotely close to my idea and that's a good sign. Originality is a key part of "creating" artwork. This one will turn into a "sunshine city in the field" nightmare before too long and I refuse to be caught up in it. So my brain hurts as of this point.

By buglover on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 5:04 PM

Looks like incoming links from deviant & Co. are a much bigger problem anyway. Try searching "crestock" at deviant or find something at google. Looks like it's normal for people to post there images in all kind of forums. As long as it's easily possible to link to the own entry during contest, the whole public voting is a farce and it's up to the "officials" to make the right decision.

Relax everyone.

By JodyMitoma on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 6:16 PM

No where in the rules and regulations does it state that we are not allowed to ask friends or family to vote...

This goes for the Deviantart issue that seems to be bothering a lot of you as well. There is no official rule stating that we are not allowed to post our Crestock photoshop entry links elsewhere on the internet.

Thank you.

Voting solution

By farazwarsi on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 6:33 PM

I see theres alot of issues concerning voting. I agree for the most part its not fair. A possible solution would be to let only submitters to vote. The way i see it, their work is at stake and they should be the ones who should have the most say, and you cant vote for yourself.

If you want to get really technical: each submitter gets 3 vote tokens or something, and they can use them on 3 seperate submissions not including their own. That may get too complicated.

We still talking about lobbying?

By 3dcreativesolutions on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 6:45 PM

1. Crestock does not have a problem with traffic driven to their site. I'm pretty sure of that.

2. The bullet points in the main rules mention offen that anyone is elligible to submit or vote on entries.

3. Other contest that have gone this route (total chaos) have ended up with secondary voting measures where the people who submitted entries get to vote their favorite thus creating even more balance.

By Draconis on Thursday, 22 November 2007 2:54 AM

I was going to enter this contest but after seeing how round one is I say this vote system will TKO me from entering anything on here period. I've sold pictures that are way better then any of the top 5 voted images. I went to college to be a graphic artist and can tell you that the top image so far is not art at all period.

The Vote System is and as far as I am concerned the contest is a bogus and perhaps a fraud. What a way to boost traffic flow to get noticed by Google and any other browser. Bravo on the BS of a contest. If this was truly legit the votes would be done from a independent group of judges that know what art is and have a degree in the field.

Have fun :)

By thejaba on Thursday, 22 November 2007 4:55 AM

From what I'm seeing so far among the contest entries, seems like there's a couple groups of people: professional artists and hobbyist artists, judging by the quality of the stuff. I'm guessing that the hobbyists are having a blast doing this. What about everyone else?

Any professional/serious artists out there should know not to have your ego sitting next to you when you work, and also not to fall in love with your piece, right? So what if not enough people vote for you? That counts for only 40%. If even the judges don't vote for you, so what? There's 3 more rounds. And if you don't win anything at all (which most of us won't, by numbers), so what? That's part of competing. You still took part in a fun little set of challenges, didn't you? And hopefully you learn some stuff along the way.

Try to have some fun and chill :)

The Jaba Has Spoken.....

By dcloud on Thursday, 22 November 2007 6:29 AM

Couldn't have said it better myself. Have a blessed Turkey day everyone!!

Fun aside.

By rayvolvez on Friday, 23 November 2007 3:07 AM

I'm giving up on the remaining of this competition seeing that votes jacking or weird votings are in place. Doesnt makes sense to spend all my time only to lose to some jackers. That said, those in top 3 now are still value as compared to few days ago.. It is still upsetting to know that a skills/abilities/talents based contest with great prizes has turned out to be a popularity/cheaters/jackers contest where voting is concerned.

Can't deny that there are indeed a lot of talents in the competition..

By rayvolvez on Friday, 23 November 2007 3:09 AM

Can't deny that there are indeed a lot of talents in the competition.. But sadly this competition isnt going the way it should with 40% on public voting.

Can't stop the tide for supporting, period!

By DeviantElite on Friday, 23 November 2007 4:50 AM

Might as well give up now as our friends on here will get all the voting support to keep them on top and the judges will bow to the majority vote. Nothing like pumping the votes through mass volume of friends through out deviant art & myspace. I suggest you keep the top 3 and keep voting for them as the tide can never be stopped. Keep pumping up & put the votes my friends!!! ;)

Photos

By pejot on Friday, 23 November 2007 6:35 AM

Q1. for Crestock: Can we use photos from another round?
Ex.: Banana in round II.

Q2. Can we use "Daily free stock photo" in the contest?

Why should I bother to participate...?

By SilverLeafArtist on Friday, 23 November 2007 6:38 AM

OMG, I signed up to buy images for my site and noticed this contest. Cool idea but after reading these posts and looking at the images. I think Crestock needs to monitor their contest better. I see major copyright violations in way to many entries on here. Not to mention several are lack of originality. Now I see people recruiting others to vote for friends. Truly no honor among thieves as it appears to be on here.

Why should I bother to participate with any of the contest if the voting is rigged?

By buglover on Friday, 23 November 2007 9:59 AM

@JodyMitoma

This is part of the contestrules from crestock:

17. Attempts at obtaining added personal voting power by registering multiple accounts or otherwise exploit the system, is strictly forbidden. Attempts at doing so may result in the voiding of votes cast and/or the removal of any entries submitted by the offender. Our decision in this respect will be final, no correspondence will be entered into.

"…or otherwise exploit the system..." I think that linking from external links to a single entrie is a way trying to exploit the system. I wonder how you could think that that would be ok!?

Cheers BL

RE: buglover

By JodyMitoma on Friday, 23 November 2007 3:57 PM

Ahh, my appologies. I must of missed that.
Thank you for bringing it up. It does make sense, don't get me wrong.. I just didn't think it was a part of the official rules here at Crestock.

Its all ok

By George on Friday, 23 November 2007 8:18 PM

Its all ok, the person that gets the prize got the prize as a gift straight from the Will of Christ anyway, so we can all quit worrying about whos gonna win or if its fair or not, cause God knows who needs it, and thats who's getting it. its sad to see so many silly people thinking were in control of the events ahead of us.

Hello,

By tendo on Saturday, 24 November 2007 1:25 PM

I've been following this contest for a while now. Just waiting for rounds 3 and 4 =). Now, I haven't voted yet but i will.
My problem is that i think the public voting weighs just too heavy and isn't really fair. i mean: come on.. Bush on the side of a building??
Maybe it's an idea to let only participants be able to vote, i mean people who have actually submitted an image in the contest. with that, not just anyone can vote for their friends.

Round 1 Disqualifications

By Crestock on Saturday, 24 November 2007 4:25 PM

Two entries in round 1 have unfortunately been withdrawn from the contest due to vote manipulation. The participants in question have been notified via email. Further action may be taken regarding other entries in the contest as well, depending on the outcome of our investigations. We will make a more comprehensive comment on the many questions regarding voting and possible voting irregularities in due course.

In my opinion

By gwdoru on Saturday, 24 November 2007 7:22 PM

In my opinion the voting its a disaster... waiting for judges note

Vote me

By capekpak on Sunday, 25 November 2007 2:07 PM

It is better if the judges give a note in each picture in this contest, so we can improve our skill ....also for public voting......I dunno.. is hard for me....I don't have a friend to vote me.....

By SilverLeafArtist on Sunday, 25 November 2007 4:49 PM

Instead of removing images, remove the bloody voting and let your judges do just that judge and vote. If you have the entries removed there are others that will do the same and vote cheat. Even the playing field and do away with the biased based vote system you have here now. Crestock your actions are that right now of to little and to late as it seems. Time to do this contest some justice.

By Cypres0099 on Monday, 26 November 2007 1:22 AM

Can we use images from round 1 in the following rounds?

there is more than one page of entries

By raynimmo on Monday, 26 November 2007 6:37 AM

So many people only seem to be voting for what appears on the front page, sorted by votes or comments. If you have a look around you will see some fantastic pieces of art that sadly have not recieved any votes yet. Come on, let the little guy have a bit of glory. Here is a snippet of some that I think deserve more votes than they currently have: nice warhol-esque image - http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=4458 . similar to my own, nice lighting touches - http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=4618 . Again nice lighting, went a bit mad with the texture brushes tho - http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=4321 . Cool russian retro style - best use of the bush image i think (non-political) - http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=4435 . Cool idea, well executed banana - http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=4476 . Nice idea, artwork could have been better, but nice - http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=4476 . . Probably the best banana based image - http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=4399 . Another cool banana - http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=4771 . . Nice bush, merged with old pic - http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=4280 . . These are just a handfull of entries from near the back, none of these are on the front page, therefore not being viewed, I encourage you all to view the images sorted by vote, then go to the last page and start from there. All the scamming and vote-rigging that has occured was expected, people are not that honest when it comes to big-bucks prizes , bear in mind rule 16 that states - "Any one person may only cast a single, positive vote for each contest image. To be eligible to vote, you must be a registered user at crestock.com, which is 100% free of charge. The maximum number of eligible votes from any single organisation or IP location is 5." - so at least we can all give ourselves five votes each and blame it on a shared IP table !!!. I have enjoyed looking at other peoples entries and offering comments, but I feel that the prize is too big to allow the general public to vote on, unless there was a better way of possibly locking out an IP once a vote has been cast from there, something crestock needs to think about for future comps.

sort your form crestock

By raynimmo on Monday, 26 November 2007 10:27 AM

somebody really should sort this form out, I have seen this happen everywhere when it posts duplicate entries. Cmon crestock, how professional can you be if your website isnt up to scratch.

A few things.

By martyssweb on Monday, 26 November 2007 6:13 PM

1) do away with the voting section, it's a disaster waiting to happen, let the judges vote.
2) how about offering lower marks to those who wait till the last minute and copy someone elses idea, ie in round 2 how many robots are we gonna see.
3) how about obvious links to our portfolios. this way it can be a showpiece, and a way to drive more traffic to our collections.

one other thing

By martyssweb on Monday, 26 November 2007 8:55 PM

one other thing is bothering me, about the entries, (particularily in round 2). Shouldn't there be something like a percentage of the image which needs to be based on the images supplied, say 70% or something. So many of them seem to be the artist pulled the alternator into a layer, and morphed into something else. The end result in many cases is excellent, very nice pieces but hardly, what I would call photo manipulation, and more of an illustration with nearly no basis in the provided images. This probably should be a contest unto itself, as, as i said some of them are very good, but, if were going to go that route, why bother providing the images at all.

And lastly, based on the percentage rule above (and the other contest rules) make someone prescreen the images before they get posted, that way theres less muck to go through to try to find one to vote for.

closed contest

By martyssweb on Monday, 26 November 2007 9:11 PM

how about a contest open only to crestock submitting artists... Wouldn't that be nice, you know giving back to those who are helping make the site a success.

By buglover on Tuesday, 27 November 2007 11:06 AM

LOL If you Klick at the first pic in the "random" list and than click thorugh the pics by the navigation arrow, you won't see the pictures in the randomed order – It will be shown in the uploaded order. The same will happen with "coments".

I just was wondering cause when I wanted to surf thorugh the entries of round #2 to place my votes he just showed me 10 entries. That was because he randomed the 10th upload at first and than just showed me the 9 earlier ones.

Looks like the only way to look at all of them is by the "upload date".
If you want to make it more fair, go to the last page of the thumbnail view, klick on the last image and than surf backwards with the arrow keys, so that the first ideas will be shown first. My two cents.

It's funny...

By JodyMitoma on Tuesday, 27 November 2007 2:45 PM

With the smallest bit of knowledge, anyone of you can figure out how to sort out the images via "votes", even without the "sort by votes" link available to us.... I've figured it out myself in about 10 seconds. :)
hehe

Crestock when are you going to get rid of the cheating?

By WebBaseReporter on Tuesday, 27 November 2007 2:45 PM

Looks like this contest is won through friends and families and not by merit of design. Crestock is a fraud by setting up a system that one can cheat and still get away with it. Not to mention a third of the entries has nothing to do with the images that were needed to be used. Then there is the fact people stealing ideas from others. Originality is a sham cause to many work of the art of others. Looks like my next assignment will be reporting fraudulent online contests and the lack of pollicing the net.

@WebBaseReporter

By Crestock on Tuesday, 27 November 2007 2:49 PM

You are entitled to your opinion, but we must say that we do not recognise the scenario you describe. - We do not agree that you can 'cheat and get away with it' in this contest. - Are you seriously suggesting that a third of the entries in the current rounds have nothing to do with the source images? - We are more than happy to listen if you have any ideas about how people in the creative industries can be prevented from stealing ideas from each other - an issue that by no means is restricted to this contest.

RE: WebBaseReporter

By JodyMitoma on Tuesday, 27 November 2007 2:59 PM

How is giving away products to the public, FOR FREE, a fraud?... Stop your complaining.

It is not Crestock's responsibility to check up on people who are not following up with copyright infringments.

Round 1 complete

By Crestock on Tuesday, 27 November 2007 3:05 PM

We do appreciate that many of you are concerned that the contest could be ruined if uncontrolled vote-rigging was allowed to turn the contest into a lottery. This is the last thing we would want, so we chose to monitor the first round in its entirety before making any decisive decisions on what action might be needed.

There have been a limited number of contestants that either have not read, understood or followed the contest rules in regard to the need to use the source images, copyright law or the voting rules. We have kept a close eye on this and luckily the problems have not been widespread. We feel that we have dealt with the entries in question fairly and proportionally – this means that a small number of entries and invalid votes have been removed and the respective contestants notified.

We should also point out that the voting system is biased towards the judges vote, which effectively means that you won't win anything just by manipulating the public votes, you need a high score from the judges too.

We do feel that the public comments and votes play a valuable part in the contest even it if is not the be all and end all in terms of the end result, particularly for the many fantastically creative entries that may not be lucky enough to make it to the final shortlist.

For consecutive rounds we have removed the option of sorting entries by votes to avoid any 'lacy voting' on entries just because they have already made it to the top.

@martyssweb's comments:
We agree that creative adaptation of the source images is one of the key aspects of the contest, in fact this is one of the key factors the judges are looking for. On the other hand we don't think anyone would benefit from there being a set percentage defining how much of the final image have to come from our source images. We think our current rules, combined with the judges' discretion, is the right way to go about this.

We did use pre-screening in our photo contest earlier this year, but we feel that this somewhat contradicts the ethos of a 'free for all' contest, and on balance the problems introduced by pre-screening far outweigh the benefits.

The idea of adding a link to the contestants' websites/portfolios is great, we'll see if we can get this implemented as soon as possible.

Remove/rename the sort by voting page

By virtualadz on Tuesday, 27 November 2007 3:53 PM

Crestock, anyone (with a bit of knowledge) can still sort out the entries by vote. You have only removed the link to it and not the page itself. The votings can be manipulated slightly cuz of this.

@WebBaseReporter
On one hand you say Crestock is cheating and on the other hand you are complaining about unethical measures adopted by the contestants. How can you combine them both. Crestock could only be cheating if they dont deliver the prize(s), even the winning entry would be chosen by external judges. Go get a shower and chill out. Don't hate if you haven't got (graphic design) talent and don't want others to win.

@those worried about the voting
The judges have enough weight (60%) on their side to see that the genuine and most deserving entries win. What if a total dud gets some % of public votes, if it doesn't get any from the judges, their tactics go to waste. Even if the best entry doesn't receive any votes it is sure to get all of the judges votes. Dont worry they know their math.

But yea sometimes you never know, there is a bit of luck involved here. So, one thing I would like Crestock to do is to reduce the public voting to 30%. It would then be negligible and give the real gems a chance to shine.

Thanks.

RE: virtualadz

By JodyMitoma on Tuesday, 27 November 2007 5:27 PM

I doubt it's realistically possible to change the rules, now that the contest has already been started. There would be too many complaints. Don't get me wrong, I personally, wouldn't mind if we had 25% public / 75% judges. It would make things that much better, but I doubt Crestock will change the rules for Rounds 2 - 4. I may be wrong however.

Although it is true that 60% of the voting power is controled by judges, the 40% controled by public is still very powerful as well. For example, (say there were 20 judges).. If 14 judges vote for an image that only got say, 10 or 20 votes from the public, and the other 6 judges voted for an image that managed to rake in 80 - 100 votes from the public (probably mostly through friends, family, and the posibility to sort by votes), it is a clear perception that the one that managed to get 80 - 100 votes will STILL win the corresponding prize for that round, even though he only got the vote of 6 judges... So, Crestock, what you are saying, about the votes being biased to the judges, is not entirely true. 60%/40% is only 10% difference from being 50%/50%...

Thanks.

RE: DevinTelfer

By JodyMitoma on Tuesday, 27 November 2007 5:35 PM

Yes, it is most likely a mistake... If you look on this page, at the top, you will see that it does in fact say that Round 3 ends the 11th of Dec.

Problems with this contest and my proposed solutions...

By nackulous on Tuesday, 27 November 2007 9:33 PM

I agree with those above who point out that the public voting system for this contest is seriously flawed.

/ / / / ONE / / / /

Problem: People can create fake accounts and vote quite easily.

Solution: Check IP addresses on all votes and those with duplicate IPs get disqualified or put into a bucket for further scrutiny.

/ / / / TWO / / / /

Problem: People are paying too much attention to the vote totals.

Solution: Don't show these #s to the public. Why should people care anyway. It's useless information. This might also have a side benefit of lowering the fake registered voters from #1 above.

/ / / / THREE / / / /

Problem: Some art is being submitted and is obviously and in some cases has a written description saying it's been done with 3D Studio Max or some other pgm other than Photoshop. I thought this was a Photoshop contest?

Solution: Disqualify those who have relied heavily on 3D rendering programs for their submission.

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / /

I think this contest is a great idea and obviously a great way for Crestock to get more eyeballs and users. However, there are some of us who have spent LOTS of hard time on our submissions and want this contest to be judged in a more fair manner.

Thanks for your consideration.

Problems:

By MTrebbin on Wednesday, 28 November 2007 3:07 AM

@ nackulous: /signed.
Great ideas. Crestock should do that - if not done so already ;)

@Crestock: I uploaded an image for round 3 and got an error. I wrote to the help-email-address /w image attached.. Hope to hear from you soon & see my image online ;)

Greets,
MT

Come on people!

By frankiebiscuit on Wednesday, 28 November 2007 10:31 AM

Even though this is a photoshop contest, I don't think Crestock is asking for every entry to be made solely in Photoshop. I think it's the case that Photoshop is almost synonymous with user created images.

Also, just because they've said they've used some other programs doesn't mean they have collected it all into Photoshop as their entry.

Finally, Crestock hasn't said this is exclusively a photomanipulation contest anywhere I've read. It's just that photomanipulation is the first thing that comes into people's mind when stock images are involved.

So lets all try not to bicker and argue to try to whittle away the competition entries down. I'm sure if Crestock finds the entries to be unlawful in end, they'll exclude it. It's Crestock's comp and it's free entry. If you think Crestock's in the wrong, don't enter. Pretend this comp never existed cos it's clearly creating some unnecessary aggravation for you.

So lets just focus in submitting an awesome entry and enjoy the opportunity. Good luck to everyone.

photo fixed

By MTrebbin on Wednesday, 28 November 2007 11:49 AM

Thanks Crestock for your quick help and fixing my photo-submission ;)

@ nackulous

By Crestock on Wednesday, 28 November 2007 12:31 PM

Some good and valid points here:

1: Fake votes: Given the time and effort all of you have put into your entries, it is only fair that we do everything we can to ensure that it's the quality of your work that counts.
It is certainly possible to bypass the first set of hurdles and get fake votes registered initially, but we are monitoring a number of different factors for the duration of the voting, so the main problem is in our opinion the negative impression this may give in the interim period, while we investigate and monitor the matter.

2. We do feel that the public vote and not least the comments play a valuable part in providing feedback and generating discussion, but given that there were several disqualified entries in the first round because of voting issues we have to agree that some entrants get carried away in this respect and refer to point 1 above.

3. The requirement to use our source images and our judging criteria do to some extent limit to what extent you can rely on 3D rendering and other techniques, but we do also reserve the right to use our discretion when assessing entries that appear marginal to the intention of the contest.

Use of images from earlier rounds

By Crestock on Wednesday, 28 November 2007 12:40 PM

Several of you have asked if you can use images from earlier rounds or our Daily Free Stock Photo in your entries.

You can, but the main qualifying and judging criteria remains that the source images provided for that particular round must form a central part of your design. We want all entries to have a uniform startingpoint as far as possible, so in other words it is not possible to start working on a design based solely on round 1 images now and submit it later on for round 4.

can i post my entries in other places too???

By mi2x on Wednesday, 28 November 2007 5:13 PM

can i like post my entries somewhere else as well (to show other people)?? like my flickr???

By buglover on Wednesday, 28 November 2007 6:36 PM

@mi2x you mean with a link that says "hi if you like my picture, please vote here" ;-P I would recommend deviantart it seams like they can bring you much more votes – people that post their pics at flickr are still having just weak votes. Or maybe ask the banana boy from round 1. He’ll be able to give you some tips. http://brentroad.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=503013

By Sysica on Wednesday, 28 November 2007 9:12 PM

Personally I don't think the public should be able to vote, period. They way votes are coming in for many pictures makes it seem like you have to run out and campaign like a politician to get votes for your composition. I'm actively seeing submissions come out of nowhere with like 10-20 votes and just this morning they had maybe 3, some had 0. This vote rigging is out of hand and makes this contest next to worthless if all those jacked up votes are counting for anything. Maybe I'll post a bulletin on MySpace to get all my buddies to vote for my lame composition.

Haters... Listen up.

By 3dcreativesolutions on Wednesday, 28 November 2007 9:24 PM

The rules as I understood them were to use the photos and do whatever we wanted to them. Just because I’d rather not rely on an eyedropper and a rarely accurate magic wand selection tool, does not mean I’m not following their rules nor that my submission is not worthy of entry or is lacking any skill set. Sure, I could have found a photo of a bent over wooden doll, and probably in the correct angle too. I did a Google image search and was amazed that I could have searched through almost 55,000 images to accomplish that… why would I do that? To me (as a 3d artist), that’s cheating :)

The puzzle pieces (524,000 Google images) I could have found too, and distorted them or used perspective adjustments in Photoshop to create the right angle. And the thickness of the puzzle pieces is a Photoshop 101 class. Instead I chose to do research on how to create one and then I could concentrate on how they fit in the scene (no pun intended). Just by me taking the necessary time to create objects into a scene that I can’t control, takes more skill and determination than slapping 3 images on top of each other, using a bland tool and then saying “but I used Photoshop, see!” The output is more the point of the contest, not tools used. Adobe did not invent creativity nor rationed it out to the few and the proud. They provided a means… so did Autodesk.

Anyway, I’m not sure why 3d is getting a bad rap in this competition. I spent hours with lighting, alpha channels, occlusion mattes, shadows, color, perspective, camera angles, textures, etc… just as I would have had to in Photoshop.

There is absolutely no reduction in creativity by using 3d software to help, or in some ways, totally take a photograph to a different level. I have been very impressed with many entries in this contest. There are some fine artists out there. If they chose to dabble in the 3d world, it would simply heighten their creative arsenal and I wouldn’t want to muffle that at all.

Stealing ideas from others...

By junglebeats on Wednesday, 28 November 2007 9:43 PM

Reference on WebBaseReporter: IMO users image entries should be hidden until the voting day, in order not to copy other ideas ;)

@ 3dcreativesolutions

By nackulous on Wednesday, 28 November 2007 10:36 PM

You make very good points.

I would certainly NEVER argue that there is less skill involved in 3d manipulation. I just thought it was a "Photoshop Contest", b/c of the title (hence my comment above).

At any rate, it should really all boil down to skill level, concept and execution.

BTW, I dig your submission for round 1. Good work.

@nackulous

By 3dcreativesolutions on Thursday, 29 November 2007 1:06 AM

Thanks again. I plan on raising the bar in round 3. I must say though, these images to work with are a little troublesome. But if I made a huge deal, that might not sound very professional of me :) Again, good luck to everyone. Crestock should consider 2 larger scale contests per year. 2 weeks per round. I'm still panting from round 1 :P

Guys dont worry about...

By mc511 on Thursday, 29 November 2007 4:08 AM

People ripping you off. if it happens it happens. Right now i got an idea and i want to put it up there as fast as i can but i also want to take my time. The judges will know the difference between a good and bad piece of art.

By thejaba on Thursday, 29 November 2007 5:45 AM

Actually something's a little off in my math, can't quite place what.

I'm an artist, whaddaya want?

@thejaba

By martyssweb on Thursday, 29 November 2007 2:16 PM

I have no problem with what program anyone chooses to use, (though I do think crestock should have picked a better name for the contest if it was open to any manipulation program). But either way, art is art how you get there doesn't matter. That being said. my one complaint is in the entries which are almost exclusively renderings, to the point where your hard pressed to find the source images. I know from crestocks response (above) that they agree.

In response to all the vote rigging nonsense, I'm assuming crestock is going to do the right thing, being a contributor to crestock, I know they are fair people, and aren't going to be faked by bogus votes.

And might I add people have fun with it. I mean it's a computer (albeit a nice one but..), not the holy grail here.

@crestock, hey you think judge ross could spare some time to do a special best and worst of these contests?

@martyssweb

By frankiebiscuit on Thursday, 29 November 2007 4:40 PM

I totally agree with you in all aspects cept that naming it a 'photoshop' contest wasn't such a bad thing but they could've mentioned it in the rules that entrants don't have to use photoshop.

And lets be honest, if Crestock fully kits out that mac pro to the fullest... it 'is' the Holy Grail.

@frankiebiscuit

By martyssweb on Thursday, 29 November 2007 4:58 PM

agreed the round four computer is very very nice, but keep in mind all this nonsense is going on now over an ipod and 13" laptop. I mean come on, nice, but hardly earth shattering. I don't think I even want to know what it's going to be like around here when round 4 voting starts.
No doubt "we ain't seen nothing yet"

ASIDE FROM EVERYTHING...

By esubi81 on Thursday, 29 November 2007 6:27 PM

i just want to comment that this contest is REFRESHINGLY AMAZING, no matter what prizes are given or how political it has become. I think it gives artists/designers a challenge and opportunity to show off some of their skills/creativity, which we all know we love to do. It's sad to think that it will all end soon and I won't have something this fun to do in my spare time. I just hope that the good people at Crestock may have considered making this an ongoing event... I don't think I've ever visited a stock image website this often EVER. Just something to consider!

By Bombardierbob on Thursday, 29 November 2007 6:42 PM

I have submitted my own work on here and have shown my friends and families but I did not ask them to vote for my work and they have not. I feel the contest should be fair to all so I will not travel down that dirty path like others have on here so far. I work in my own company office with other designers and I made it a point to let them know of the contest to see what the others can do as well as a way to take a break from our busy schedules to have fun showing off our potentials to one another. Don't get me wrong I love a new Mac to replace my old one that is going but I am also do this contest to have fun. The prise is all that people see and not the means of getting their and having fun. This has become a cut throat contest and that part I am sad.

I hope Crestock finds the means to even the playing field but we all know this world is not fair!

True talent passed by with no votes...

By SilverLeafArtist on Thursday, 29 November 2007 7:24 PM

I seen some true talents shown in both first round and second and not a single vote while the less skilled and more tongue in cheek joke image is placed on the top with votes. Yes we all know the system is broke here and no means of fixing it on the horizon but the real artists should be given more a chance through the judges then the votes we give. 40% says to to me that these will see the eyes of the judges and none of the others and from the 40% votes a winner will be picked. That is how the rules suggest and read as. That alone is sad to the ones passed by. I hope the winners are chosen from their true art skill and not by a false vote. That is my two cents on this contests.

To the Artist that have done a great job keep it up and the ones who needed to cheat or use means that are not legit or bending the rules I feel sad as you will never know what it is to be as skillful as some of these artists.

By farazwarsi on Thursday, 29 November 2007 7:43 PM

Just wanted to say i love the competition Crestock, keep up the good work...

Externals

By buglover on Thursday, 29 November 2007 7:45 PM

I just wonder why crestock just don't specifically says that external links to the own entry from other communities on the web is against the rules. Everybody here is starting to think that that is totally ok and why shouldn’t I do it if everybody else does? I’m starting to think that any link is seen as a good link. Or is it cause if they all get excluded their ain’t nobody left to get the prizes??? Or am I totally wrong and all this goes totaly conform with the rules?

Judges

By Guestical on Thursday, 29 November 2007 7:50 PM

I think the Judges are going to have more of a say on who wins that some of you guys think. I think they're going to look through all of them and not just the ones at the top of the list.

clear up this thread

By martyssweb on Thursday, 29 November 2007 8:58 PM

Hey, I'm thinking crestock should clear this whole thread, because, truth be told no matter who is revealed tomorrow as the winner there is going to be a storm, of chatter going both ways, whether they followed the votes, or went on their own, people are going to be unhappy, and voicing it.
@buglover: whats the problem with external links? I think it great getting more people hear seeing the art.
@guestical: totally agree

@ martyssweb

By buglover on Thursday, 29 November 2007 9:46 PM

Well the problem with external links is that people which are linked to a specific entry mostly don’t care for the rest of the “art” - they just come here to vote for there fellows and they leave again. I would appreciate if the people would link on the main page of this contest and say “hey check it out lot’s of great art in there and I’m in”, but that’s not the way things go.

Check the link I posted from the banana boy before, if you think all the people come here to look for the “art”. It’s an extreme but it’s a part of it.

Really there was a time I thought this contest could be interesting and fun...

@buglover

By martyssweb on Friday, 30 November 2007 3:50 AM

It still is interesting and definitely fun. I agree the "banana boy" thing was clearly not right. However, have some faith in crestock. They'll do the right thing. Besides, it shouldn't really be about winning, anyway, to me it's about getting to have fun, and show off my artistic style (for better or worse as that may be).

IMHO

By martyssweb on Friday, 30 November 2007 4:00 AM

To all who are picking on crestock... have you looked at the entries?
Round 2 was the rise of the machines
Round 3 is surreality and the macabre
People are clearly having fun, doing some great art and personally I can't wait to see what round 4 holds
So lighten up and have some fun with it will you.

By pain219 on Saturday, 1 December 2007 12:03 AM

heh round3 pictures are a bit hitchcock themed (:

I hope Crestock considers this when judging...

By esubi81 on Saturday, 1 December 2007 12:15 AM

...THE LINK BETWEEN THE IMAGES GIVEN. It just seems a little unfair to the people who aren't exactly "PROFESSIONAL PHOTOSHOPERS." I mean, so what if someone has a clever idea about how to manipulate 1 picture??? ...and then adds a small icon sized version of another image just to say that they used more than one image. If that's what this contest is all about, then they might as well only put 1 picture up per round. I just hope this is considered when judging... creativity is unique to one person and their imagination, but there's a lot of people in the world that have pretty much mastered the art of photoshop. I suppose I should feel so lucky that not all of them are participating in this contest.

@esubi81

By martyssweb on Saturday, 1 December 2007 2:31 PM

Huh... maybe I'm daft but I ready your post four times, and I have no idea what your complaint is. Not meaning to criticize you just asking for a clarification.

It's a contest

By ContestMOFO on Saturday, 1 December 2007 6:51 PM

@ esubi81, It's a contest dude... What do you expect?

By Amirali on Saturday, 1 December 2007 8:55 PM

Poor stuff on round 2. it's a shame...

@amirali

By martyssweb on Saturday, 1 December 2007 10:47 PM

Can't say I agree I think there was some good stuff in round 2.. But I was just thinking, I really wouldn't want to be one of the judge for round 3, I think there are so many really good images, I personally can't decide on who to vote for. (and all the entries aren't even in yet)

@crestock

By martyssweb on Sunday, 2 December 2007 2:46 AM

Please clarify the rules... rules 5 and 6 talk about what images you may use. but are seeming contradictory, Didn't seem to come into play much in round two, but round three, there are several absolutly beautiful images, are we allowed to use external images, (one we didn;t personally shoot, or draw from scratch)? I actualy am interested for the next round. If artist consent simply means we need to buy it from stock, this opens a world of possibilities. I wouldn;t have thought that as clearly this isn;t allowed as a normal crestock submission. Please reply as I think this is an important point for the last round.

question for crestock

By sideshowsito on Sunday, 2 December 2007 9:17 AM

Ive noticed from your 1st round , a really nice image done of a frog morphed what looks like to be a shape of a volkswagen and a huge fly ... Although i think that was really well done ( In my opinion ) ... was there a reason why it didnt even make it to the finals ? i am guessing the volkswagen he/she used was used WITHOUT permission ?? ... furthermore, i also noticed alot of entries that have alot of sources that can easily be spotted as images that arent taken that easily by your average photographer... so what im asking is : if you use a photo/image as part of your image in which was taken somewhere without the artist/photographers consent .. does that automatically forfeit the entry ? thanks for your time

Can't upload my picture for round 3

By Orlenka on Sunday, 2 December 2007 12:37 PM

I have a jpg image of 650x1000 px and i can't upload it?!
I try with an image of 644x990 px and it doesn't work too?!
I receive the error message "Only images 1000x1000 px wide/height"...
The size of the image is 270ko

@slideshowsito

By martyssweb on Sunday, 2 December 2007 2:13 PM

The rules do say you have to have the artists consent, The real question is what constitutes consent?

@ Orlenka

By Amirali on Sunday, 2 December 2007 3:11 PM

resize your image in PShop by going to image> Image size. make sure the Constrain Proportion is checked. change the width to 1000. height will change accordingly to ~1538. save it and try the upload again.

@martyssweb

By rayvolvez on Monday, 3 December 2007 1:53 AM

It depends on where u get the images, like previously Crestock says the sxc images should worked based on the terms and conditions outlined and a fair amt of images on sxc comes with standard restriction which just means no re-distribution and nothing bad done to it(aka pornography or racist works) and no re-sale..

Some would ask you to notify them so you can just notify them. Some ask u to credit them, which are kind of rare, but u can always just notify them and thank them. Those asking for written permission, just ignore :)

I think stocks external and good for use as long as no copyright infringements done.

@rayvolves

By martyssweb on Monday, 3 December 2007 2:39 AM

I am hoping crestock agrees with you, being able to use any stock material which you pay your $1 or whatever for opens up lots of possibilities, I tend to think (personally) it diminishes from the contest, it turns it into who can find the best images, and incorporate. Personally I think only able to use stuff you personally did makes it more about your art (ie photoshop skills). But thats just my opinion.

reply to martyssweb...

By rayvolvez on Monday, 3 December 2007 5:22 AM

I guess it all depends on how much of the external stock is used. Like if u take a vvv normal stock and make it part of a great thing, that is ur work.. If you take an amazing stock and just tweak little, then thats...... not really right if we speak from the ethically right angle..

But I say, lets not get too troubled and just do our best.

Above i was only referring to SXC stocks, not any other particular stock sites, because SXC stocks have their written terms and conditions which "should" qualify for use in this competition.

Quoting Crestock's reply above abt SXC stocks : they said : "the usage agreement you list seems to allow use in this contest."

http://www.sxc.hu/help/8_1 -->

@Amirali and all

By Orlenka on Monday, 3 December 2007 10:44 AM

Thanks for your help :)
I re-read the rules and i just can't understand what i was reading :p
1000x1000 px Minimum...... so i put my original comp of 1300x2000 lol
Thanks guys

Use of other images in the contest

By Crestock on Monday, 3 December 2007 4:12 PM

@martysweb, rayvolvez etc

We have to agree with rayvolvez last post; it is certainly possible to include other imagery in your entry while still creating an image that is uniquely ours.
Glimm's entry in round 1 is a good example of this; I imagine that he probably used some additional source imagery for the smoke, explosions and possibly the other aircraft. The final thing is still undoubtedly his own unique creation rather than just a modification of an exisiting image:
http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=4774

Here's a reminder of our terms regarding the use of other images:
4. One or several of the supplied images must be recognisable as a central part of your design.
5. You may add elements not found in the original images, but the usual copyright and plaguerism rules apply: you may not use someone else's material without permission. In cases of doubt, the jury and/or the Crestock staff may request to see the original image file.
6. Modifying, enhancing or altering someone else's artwork (excluding the supplied Crestock stock photos provided) does not constitute an original, valid contest entry.

Do votes actually make a difference ?

By slinky on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 2:57 AM

I noticed that the winner from round one has the most votes .. so ultimately speaking .... the votes DO count ? I sure hope the judges has a bigger say on this ...

@ slinky

By Crestock on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 10:24 AM

That's a good question; obviously the public favourites and the judges favourites don't always match, but in the first round the winning entry won BOTH the judges' and the public vote, so practically speaking the weighting of each vote component did not matter on this occasion – a worthy winner all around!

Public votes are not legit...

By Draconis74 on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 2:57 PM

Wow I found this contest just in time from deviant's site. But after reading the rules, I think this contest has holes as there are poeple getting votes from other sites linking their images there to vote on here. So far I seen 6 of Round three on Deviant alone. I think I will skip this contests due to the cheating going on.

Time for another round of vote rigging!

By SteveG190 on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 3:21 PM

Yeah.

By stevster on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 3:28 PM

Online voting will never be fair when dealing with such expensive prizes, I wish Crestock would only allow comments. :(

By robbins on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 3:31 PM

Yeah, it confuses me how some entries manage to get such a large number of votes so quickly when clearly they are nothing special.

I mean no offence but 14 votes for a cut/paste/rotate?! http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=5768

I find that strange. Oh well. I hope the judges see through it.

Less whining, more Photoshop!

By HKHKH on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 3:49 PM

Did Picasso enter a lot of free contests? Are you Picasso? Then get back to work.

Relax and chill...

By rayvolvez on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 3:56 PM

Arent we all used to it.. just chill, drink a cup of cold milk or coffee and take this as a chance to just test ur skills.. Lets not think so much abt the voting rigging, if people want to be dirty and cheapskate enough to rig votes then let them be. Cheers. 40% is a lot but somehow if Banana Mountains can be persecuted and gone for his votes rigging, we know and can be almost sure that Crestock will try their best to keep this whole thing fair and nice.. Now lets chill and smile.

By stevster on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 4:03 PM

Well said Ray.

CRESTOCK please

By Paul on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 5:50 PM

Crestock please I hope you will disable vote for the final round, and just use the judges vote... 'cause everyone is cheating in this contest...
examples:
http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=5312

http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=5847

By Epidemic on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 6:51 PM

Ya know,

I'm not even sure that I care about winning this contest anymore. I was happy to have had the experience and the challenge. I personally like the work that I created, and it's already printed, mounted and hung on my wall. It's just a contest.

Crestock, some of the comments that people leave are very rude and offensive and should not be allowed to be posted. Maybe next time you guys can personalize the comments section for the artist to filter out some of the childish statements that are posted. I'm sure that every artist in this contest would agree that having peaople tell you that your art "sucks" is uncalled for.

EPidemic

By lol on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 7:07 PM

That's ridiculous are you still trying to defend your self? speaking about you dont care about the contest when you have cheated all the time?

By Epidemic on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 7:17 PM

^
To my point..... Seriously dude.....grow up.

Ditch the votes or hide them...

By Bombardierbob on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 7:40 PM

This contest is fun but that is fading fast with the vote cheating still in place as well as people can see who has the most votes through the comments as the most votes has the highest comments. Funny that it doesn't take much to see that. I as a designer find it sad that the votes need to be shown when they should be only seen by the host and judges and after they check everything on the up an up to make sure it's legit.

To the Cheaters who cry grow up and relax on the votes, you know you will never win anything or learn anything if you have to cheat inthe first place period.

another one cheating! yeahhh lol

By darioberardi on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 9:16 PM

https://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=5693

more of 80 votes in less then 20 minutes!!

next pleaseeeee

Federal Bureau of Vote Investigations!!

By ern on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 9:29 PM

i'm sure that there is no way of proving or detecting vote fraud. this is what msn and facebook friends all over the world are for. There is an image in the 3rd round that had 100 votes (for the second!!) in the first day. why i can't believe that this could be possible. Perhaps my common sense says so. and if people are doing this with no shame, they are trying to make a fool out of me. So dear Crestock!, do something about it.

By sukit on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 9:57 PM

you people are killing me!!! you are mad because their artwork looks really good!

Sad

By Sysica on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 10:20 PM

I liked that one too. I liked mine better but still...

Another clear example of why public voting shouldn't count for anything here. The judges are all respectable and should have the entire say in the matter. It shouldn't be a popularity/linkfest contest. If you want to have a proper public voting system, allow ONLY THOSE WHO HAVE SUBMITTED AN ENTRY to place votes. Since we're not allowed to vote for our own submissions, this would make more sense as a contest to be judged by our peers.

sukit

By SilverLeafArtist on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 10:26 PM

Funny when not even a day and the vote is over 100 when the last round and rounds prior didn't get that many votes on the first day. I feel that this is not proving how broke a system they have here and still don't care as the lack of response and action on Crestock proves my point. I seen the link off site here for the one in question and he/she is getting all the friends to vote. Guess they need the laptop more then anyone else on here.

Just sad that a contest could be so very corruptible and the owners so blind to the facts or just simply don't care. I support good art and pay for it but the more I see this the more I think I will do business elsewhere. To sad cause this sort of publicity is not what draws me to want to stay.

By SilverLeafArtist on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 10:49 PM

OK the vote jumped to 152+ and is still climbing....now this shows how messed up the vote system is or perhaps hacked. This is sad!

By phreek_23 on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 10:53 PM

To SilverLeafArtist -
I agree. It's very sad that there is some kind of vote spamming going on (I assume)

160+

By SilverLeafArtist on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 10:57 PM

This just to show the true nature of a high profile contest.

160+

By SilverLeafArtist on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 11:00 PM

This just to show the true nature of a high profile contest.

Crestock dropped the votes to 44...

By SilverLeafArtist on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 11:20 PM

Interesting that they didn't get rid of it like they did with the one. Also noticed my end that it has said I voted on an image that I know I had not. What is the deal with this contest? This has truly tarnished my view and I can see it has the done it for others. I am done with here and will do business elsewhere as I see no good being here for me or my business.

Good luck as you will need it the way this is going...

suck it up

By martyssweb on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 11:26 PM

suck it up people. I mean really, I personally don't have a single vote, and am still amused by the whole thing, why is everyone so uptight.

indeed

By fluksu on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 11:58 PM

@ martyssweb, I agree. I haven't submitted something yet (was going to for round 3 and 4 but got caught up with work, missed round 3 so I'm going to submit to 4 hopefully)...

I think it's just 'cause everyone wants to win obviously, so they're trying to create chaos so no one wins if they don't, lol I don't know. It's a contest...

ATTENTION CRESTOCK STAFF

By sideshowsito on Wednesday, 5 December 2007 7:30 AM

Ive taken this snippet in defence to what ive written as a reply to what seems to be causing Ruckuss over ROUND 3 with my entry... Ive written the full reply on the comments ive place a few minutes ago ....

This is from the comment ive written for you in my entry;s comments section ....in case you missed it that is :

ATTENTION TO CRESTOCK STAFF :: .guys if you are reading this, in my defence .. how do i know these jokers arent SPAMMING my pic with votes to get me eliminated ? Im minding my own business till i somehow reach the spotlight then theyre ready to throw the pitchforks ....
guys, in my opinion , i personally feel that your voting system is flawed that if you felt that too many people vote, why even have it in the first place ?.. i mean what kind of response did you think you would generate to a contest open to the ENTIRE PLANET ?...As you stated in your rules, you track IP addresses .. with this i welcome you to investigate and do take action if need be : i am curious as to where all these votes are coming from myself ! if you can provide this info for me please email me ASAP as i would like to know .

anyway ,.. just wanted to make sure this message gets to you .

By desixner on Wednesday, 5 December 2007 11:43 AM

failure is fate of the public vote system. if u want some to be disqualified you can cheat by voting his/her images from the same ip a 1000 times. if you want to get the notebook too much you can create 1000's of accounts and vote yours' from many different ip adresses. if you do that u can easily say that someone else did it. -this is not an accusation- Some of these frauds can be traced. While discussing these, i belive we are missing one important point. This is an art contest and people should be evaluated by their skills. Good workd "must" be rewarded and artists motivated. If i ask my msn and facebook friends to open an account and vote for me, will you be able to trace that?? Many people here has lost faith in the evaluation system and justice in the contest. An ultimate solution is immidiately needed.

By buglover on Wednesday, 5 December 2007 11:44 AM

Could it be the button "vote for Round 3 images" is still linked to round #2?

@desixner

By Bombardierbob on Wednesday, 5 December 2007 2:00 PM

I slept on this contest after seeing the votes being manipulated on several entries including the round 1 winners. The day of IP tracing is past as users of AOL or other internet servers provide a different IP then the one the user is using. Then there is IP spoofing as well. This system is broken here and can be exploited and has. The artist said the votes could be from the model he used in his picture through her friends. This says what to me that oh it is ok to get everyone I know and all their friends they know and all the families everyone knows to just vote on their art work. Now this becomes not a contest of design merit but who knows more people period.

Sad to say this but the shadow of doubt has been casted on this contest as being fair as been raised. There are to many loop-holes in rules and these loop-holes are and have been exploited. Chances of a fair winner is purely tainted as these actions have been taken place here. IP investigations are a joke as I have already stated only cause I know this as a moderator and admin on another site that has several thousand users. It makes me truly sad to do any art work for this contest to know that what has happen took place here.

Crestock should now do something more then say they are investigating as clearly what actions they have taken so far is to little to late as it now seems. I am not whining but voicing my dismay at this situation that Crestock has let aloud to take place. Heck there are entries in Round 3 that should have been in Round 1.

I take pride in what I get paid to do as an artist and a designer, I take no pride to seeing that be tarnished by cheaters and frauds and exploiters.

i meant can i post it n flickr, cause i want them to see what i made

By mi2x on Wednesday, 5 December 2007 3:21 PM

hey buglover, i didn't really mean like getting more votes with posting my picture other places, but can i just put it on my flickr, cause i worked on it and want to show it to my friends??? cause it's my work, and i want to put it as a "hey, i made something new on photoshop", offcourse mentioning :that it was put in the contest plus, that it's used from stock photos we got......

By Sysica on Wednesday, 5 December 2007 4:12 PM

Just to be safe I'd personally wait until the voting was over for that particular round before putting my submission on a public place like Flikr or Deviant Art.

Anyways, I'd like to say again that the public voting has to be disabled completely. 40% of a score from public votes is way too much. Even if an entry gets mass votes from different IP addresses there's no way to ensure that they're not being influenced in some way. In any contest on the internet, public voting is just asinine. This all feels a lot like "Hot or Not" for people looking for validation for their mediocre skills. There's far too much potential corruption for a public system to work properly.

...winners are...

By SilverLeafArtist on Wednesday, 5 December 2007 7:39 PM

What gets my blood going is the top voted is an industrial studio artists with the resources and connections that 90% designers on here can not compete against. Sad that the artist used a model and the model is supposedly tell others to vote for the image.

Not only the voting system flawed but the contest it self is. This contest is just not about the prizes but free publicity to studios who win the contests. What is fair when the competition is made of the wolves.

By zallpaper on Wednesday, 5 December 2007 11:53 PM

can we use more then one pic for our image?

By strudelhouse on Thursday, 6 December 2007 12:16 AM

i like the idea of hiding the number of votes a picture has

By Disenheartened on Thursday, 6 December 2007 4:25 AM

This contest is all about who you know and networking social sites rather than your art standing on it's own against others. It makes me weep.

Social Networking Contest to Industrial Art Studios...

By Bombardierbob on Thursday, 6 December 2007 12:58 PM

Looks like several designers are ether posting on MySpace.com or FaceBook.com or DeviantArt.com and several other sites. Now it seems that a few top designs are the product of Industrial Art Studios with more resources and capital to step above any contestant design. Wow green screens to models. What a way to win a contest. I love the one about the model used tell their friends to vote for the image used of her, what a great way to go around the guidelines of the contest set on here.

As a freelancer who does mostly photo touch ups to logos and web page designs with the occasional graphic art design piece created find this contest fun at first but sickening at the end when I see what sort of actions taken place that tells me why we have the worse image to the profession field. I love creating art and contests are my way to explore what I can do but not at the price of violating my own ethics.

Looks like Crestock is promoting this sort of behavior instead of stopping it as they continue to use public votes and to the point to dropping a entry vote that was boosted down to a number of votes higher then any other entry. Funny I recall they took out several entries in the prior contests for this very same actions. And as pointed out before IP addresses can not be truly tracked as they like to claim for investigation as my own provider has my IP address in the center of Australia when in fact I am in the North East of the US. I just find all this saddening to say the least when there was a little hope from the start to no hope now with all the scandal and other actions take up to now.

just curious

By martyssweb on Thursday, 6 December 2007 2:43 PM

where are all the fourth round entries? everyone is obviously holding off on posting, just curious why, to avoid copycating, to check out the competition, or are we all just working really hard?

Looks like a coverup

By SilverLeafArtist on Thursday, 6 December 2007 4:45 PM

The winner of the 3rd round is going to be the one that has the most votes that Crestock is coving up for and defending with the bogus investigation. Talk about fair justice as I find out that this site even has had the gull to say I voted for the image when I didn't. This contest wreaks bad.

A real coverup...

By SilverLeafArtist on Thursday, 6 December 2007 4:52 PM

The artist/designer post was removed by Crestock stating that the model he used might have gotten the votes boosted. Talk about turning a blind eye on the truth as well as investigating goes. When will this end? Looks like Crestock has picked the winner and will go to any lengths to protect it even turn a blind eye on the facts that the vote system is rigged and can be hacked.

By j909 on Thursday, 6 December 2007 5:15 PM

tnx crestock for such an amazing pictures for round 4 , definetely the most inspirational set of pictures of all rounds , see you on tuesday , good luck 2 all,

regards , (o;
jorge, mexico.

@silverleafartist

By martyssweb on Thursday, 6 December 2007 7:27 PM

That's some accusation. While there are some things I'm not thrilled with, to say they are rigging the contest is a bit absurd. That has real legal ramifications and why would they do such a thing. ie they wouldn't. Care to implicate them as the alleged gunman on the grassy knoll while your at it. I mean come on I personally am not thrilled with the one which is currently in the lead because I don't feel as though it is based strongly enough on the source images, but... Clearly the person who did it is extremely talented. And regarding earlier posts, give me a break, criticizing him for having to much resources, get real what he's better than you so, he should should only work with one arm, a patch over his eye. And should only be able to use a pc with photoshop ver 3. All this to level the playing field. Give me a break people the person has talent. good for him.

By SteveG190 on Thursday, 6 December 2007 8:30 PM

Voting for a friend because they're a friend rather than on artistic merit is no way to run a contest. We have every right to complain about people who try to corrupt the system and just help a friend rather than give a crap about what other people are seriously trying to do by compete with their skill rather than popularity outside the contest. If one of my friends put up a peice of absolute trash (not saying that yours did, this is hypothetical) that should have no votes whatsoever and i vote on it because it's them rather than they're any good doesn't make this an artistic contest, which this is supposed to be. The votes count for nothing other than how many "friends" you have on Facebook or Myspace that see your link in your bulletin and vote for you. I'm seriously thinking of not submitting anything in round 4 unless I see any justice done.

@friendsoftheaccused

By martyssweb on Thursday, 6 December 2007 9:08 PM

Ummm.... Hmmm lets see so your admitting to cheating. Oh give me a break. I sincerely hope this posting was a farce.

@Crestock

By desixner on Thursday, 6 December 2007 10:50 PM

please hear what the "friends of the accused" say. It all explains why there should be no public voting here. Crystal clear.

By j909 on Thursday, 6 December 2007 11:09 PM

dont you all think judges have plenty of eye and knowledge to decide who wins , did you checked thei rbios and where they work and all , they are top notch people in this kind of stuff so come on !!, take it easy ,so what do you care about public votes if judges decide at the end , the work of each other speaks by itself , so better get yourself to work hard cause this last round will be the hardest one ,

(o;
good luck ,
jorge , mexico.

is it fair !

By defekt on Thursday, 6 December 2007 11:22 PM

i agree with most of the artist that the voating is cheating in a way, So i suggest that only members from the contest who are uploading images to take the votes SO IS THIS FAIR i ask the competitors. And one more thing, CRESTOCK you needed better organization of the contest, i see a lot of mistakes here so the people are not wary pleased with it .

Facts about Public Voting...

By SilverLeafArtist on Thursday, 6 December 2007 11:31 PM

The fact in why Public Vote is 40% is plain and simple to break the contest down to a certain amount of entries that the Judges view and make their jobs more easier. Think about it with the possibility of up to a thousand entries to view they can break that down to only a handful from our votes. Now with all the cheating going on, of course Crestock will turn a blind eye to it cause they don't have a clue how to stop it or fix it in time. Sad that talent will be passed by on here if the current trend continues the same path.

I will post a design for the final round but will not hold my breath as the system is 99.9% against me as it seems for I don't use myspace, or facebook...or deviantart.

j909-jorge

By defekt on Thursday, 6 December 2007 11:34 PM

but what if the picture i great and the artist i cheating as well, do you think that he is a favourite like at the first round.....

@j909

By martyssweb on Thursday, 6 December 2007 11:59 PM

Well yes I do think the judges are qualified, that being said, it has not been said whether the judges see all the competition or only the top voted. And honestly even if they do see all of them They only have 60% vote. Hence if an entry only has a vote or two The judges theoretically don't have the voting power to make it a winner even if it should be.
Though it has also not been said what that 60% means. It could mean 60% in voting power, which would mean they final say, or it could mean they only have 60% of the mean average, which would mean they can't actually out rule anything unless, this would of course be further dependant upon how many votes each of them gets,

2nd Round Winner

By Crestock on Friday, 7 December 2007 3:30 PM

The winner of Round 2 has now been announced here:
http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/photoshop-contest-07-ndash-round-2-winner-announcement-110.aspx

By ydemidov on Friday, 7 December 2007 3:56 PM

Good stuff. All of the top 15 entries are just perfect, i bet it was very hard to pick the winner this time.

On another note, i do agree with what people are posting here. Its sad to see vote fraud galore. People just get all of their myspace friends to post comments like "breathtaking" and inflate votes on entries which are (i am sorry to say) complete crap. Popular votes should not account for 40% but rather 20% i would say.

90% of the entries are just recycled variations of the same "random display of editing skills" with no real idea whatsoever. I think that for next year you guys should also require an explanation of the idea and the thought process. A clever idea, an entry which makes you pause and think about it for a moment is in my eyes much more valuable vs something which shows a lot of editing work but speaks absolutely nothing.

great competiton crestock

By mi2x on Friday, 7 December 2007 5:59 PM

hey reguardless of all the voting complaints, i think this competition was very cool. even though i didn't have time to enter all rounds, i enjoyed the rounds i did enter and also enjoyed seeing other people's creative work. it was challenging and creative ( and fun. :):):) hope i enter next time there'll be something like this.

By SicTransit983 on Sunday, 9 December 2007 2:35 AM

Is there going to be anymore competitions in the future?

if so i would keep an eye out, this one has been fun

From an ICT point of view

By rpabst on Sunday, 9 December 2007 12:42 PM

I've been reading this log with great interest. Obviously I appreciate the concerns about vote rigging. Crestock is probably getting an enormous amount of new members that are entitled to vote after signup. They are probably not going to add a single picture to the image bank. From an ICT point of view, the contest is run over Internet technology so they'll probably get many thousands of anonymous people on their doorstep. It's almost impossible to check their intentions BEFORE they rig a vote. Crestock has to analyze all IP traffic to find suspicious patterns and that is an art in itself. You simply can't expect Crestock to hire risk & fraud analists because they started a nice contest.

But as far as I see it, this problem is selfsolving. If Crestock misses a vote rig or a copycat, the community responds immediately with sharp comments. Crestock can create nice SQL queries to focus on these situations. Secondly, you can't win with a bad image. Just take a look at the round 1 and 2 results. Each top 15 image deserves it's place, it's brilliant work. I'm not sure about the order of these lists, but if you care to take a look at our judges-credentials, our images are in good hands. Good luck to all of you.

I thought this was a Photoshop contest?

By dukerev on Monday, 10 December 2007 9:35 AM

I guess using stock photos in 3D renderings is an application of using stock. However, lot of the entries are 3D renderings done previously with the artist just adding small elements of the stock photo into their existing artwork. This is being done in Photoshop'ed entries too.

Most people who buy stock photos are in advertising and print/web publishing. How often do people working in Maya use stock photos?

martyssweb

By stugriffith on Monday, 10 December 2007 6:33 PM

i, for one, am holding off. i saw two late entries very similar to mine last round. one even placed.

Submitted

By PeterA on Tuesday, 11 December 2007 9:44 AM

Good luck to all participants!

By ydemidov on Tuesday, 11 December 2007 5:24 PM

Is this a Photoshop contest or an art contest? Two different things. First of all a lot of the artists use work which they had "stored away" already, just adding some small element from the photos. Second, a lot of people use 3D software. Third a "painting" which contains a small (1%) element of any given photo and is completely unrelated otherwise is not something i would call a "photoshop" contest entry.

Taking a phone (for example), reducing it to 0.5% of the overall picture size and putting it somewhere in the corner of a completely random artwork created in 3D or using a draw pad is not an entry in a "photoshop" contest but somehow it is valid here.

Dont get me wrong, there is a lot of simply amazing work being submitted but it is unfair to people who spent days on "photo manipulation" only to lose to firms, groups of people or artists that use previously created work, rendering software or simply paint a 99% new picture.

Next time i think the rules need to be clearer in terms of what the contest is about so that people who dont want to compete in a "who can use a draw pad better" contest dont wast time thinking its a "photoshop contest".

@ydemidov

By SilverLeafArtist on Tuesday, 11 December 2007 7:55 PM

Good points added but so far Crestock has yet to truly come forth on the finer details of the contest or that of the rules. From the look of the past winners it shows they have the judges geared to artsier photo-manipulation designs then a true Photoshop contest. Then you have the vote system made up geared on who has the most friends and popularity. This contest truly is not created well or operated well period.

The host should be forth coming with answers and not this BS of silence and clarify the rules and what exactly they want then this No-Spec approach contest.

Crestock also what is up with setting deadlines and have people submit new designs after it? A deadline is set for a reason, what a joke!!!

It's the vote hacker...

By SilverLeafArtist on Tuesday, 11 December 2007 11:28 PM

This has happened last time...never good!

If users can vote - do you think it is fair play?

By contest member on Wednesday, 12 December 2007 1:05 PM

I think online-voting in this way is not very efficient. It is not a secure way to find out, what is the best image and it does not make sure that the voter is a good "jury" or just a friend (or many more) who wants to help a friend winning a contest. Just the jury should do it!

This Competition is just so great

By Ansam on Wednesday, 12 December 2007 5:25 PM

Theres so much talent in all of the guys who participated. And it gives me an honor (being so far away from most people here) to be among them, among these professional people, and witness this whole thing. I agree we should leave all of it to these highly qualified judges. I dont have the time nor the knowledge to "campaign" for votes for my image. I give up on public votes !! May the best win.

Advice?

By Milkbird on Wednesday, 12 December 2007 10:01 PM

I know I dont stand much of a chance but being a self taught photoshopper I had alot of fun doing this contest. Any comments to my picture would be greatly appreciated. Any critique good or bad accepted. I just wanna know what i could have done better and maybe some cool hints and tips. Thanks.Below is my image.

https://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=6249

PRINCIPLES OF WINNIG

By desixner on Thursday, 13 December 2007 12:21 AM

i have a few word to say on what goes on in this contest.

1 if you want people to vote for your image, then make a GOOD one.
2 if you don't have a good one, and still want people to vote for your image, pray to god.
3 if praying does'nt work and you have to to something about it, like making comments on your own (or on your friends') image never say "wow, superb, i have never seen such a thing in my life etc." Because key to a succesful propaganda is invisibility. Othervise people can understand that u believe u can fool them.
4 if people are not fool enough. don't worry u still got hope. U can count on your friends all over the world and ip stuff. But never do that if your work does not look good enough to worth all those votes. If it does it will have them anyway. If you have a stunning image and still making vote fraud, god will punish you in hell :P
5 If you can't win even if you tried so hard, -but not creating your artwork-, for the next contest, goto step one!!!!

good luck to all.

PRINCIPLES OF WINNING

By CT on Thursday, 13 December 2007 6:06 AM

This question is for desixner ... What if you have a good image but you don't have any support to vote for you?

It's kinda unfair to make this contest to become something of popularity contest...I can see some designs that is very well done but have low votes, and others looks like crap but have high votes.

I hope the judges is aware of that and should lower down the percentage of public voting in the future contest.

Best of Luck to all.

IF THE KING IS NAKED, THEN HE'S NAKED

By desixner on Thursday, 13 December 2007 7:08 AM

come on people.
whatever you say about an entry, it is what it is. u can not make people think it is more than what it is. so stop unrealistic exaggerated compliments please.

@CT, you're right.

S***

By wilsonink on Thursday, 13 December 2007 9:23 PM

why didn't i know about this before! *cries* are you going to make another contest :) ?

Voting

By H3D on Sunday, 16 December 2007 6:24 PM

This isnt really about who is the best photoshopper, its all about who got the most friends on facebook and myspace. Voting system killed this contest.

Advice too please..

By shyrose on Sunday, 16 December 2007 11:50 PM

Like milkbird, i'd like some critique on my submission please. :) I'm an amateur photoshopper, and had fun just participating. Any good/bad comments or suggestions would be much appreciated.. Thank yoou

http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=6357

This isn't working!

By dave_cr on Monday, 17 December 2007 1:52 PM

This competition has gotten out of control. Atleast if you look at the voting system. It's just not working. I just gave a (in my opinion) winning entry it's 24th vote. The one with the most votes right now has 170!! Pictures that just aren't good gets extremely many votes just because the "artists" are spamming the net in search for voters. In the rules it says that the votes only has 40% of the saying but that can't possibly still apply, can it? I think that the most fair thing to do is just to leave it ALL up to the judges. No votes included in the decision-making process. Thats just my saying!
Good luck to all of you REAL artist in the competition that actually put down some soul and feeling in your pieces.

peace out

i concur

By stugriffith on Monday, 17 December 2007 5:16 PM

straight judging. no public vote.

Need advice, comment, critic or anything..

By horlick on Monday, 17 December 2007 10:43 PM

As stated above,
here is my art.

if it is a crap, just say so, I don't mind. I want to know where is my limit.
http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=6492

and this is my friend's
http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=6428

Thank you for your time.

Voting Suggestion

By whimsicalmom on Tuesday, 18 December 2007 2:29 AM

I know that many people are complaining about the voting system. I too believe it is a flawed system which caters to popularity and possibly fraudulent voting. Instead of completely eliminating outside voting. Why not make the outside voting come from an independent source that hasno ties to the contest artists. I know there are companies that specialize in providing these types of services. Either that or remove the current voting system and only let the judges make the winning decision based on skill, talent, and creativity.

By ydemidov on Tuesday, 18 December 2007 3:58 AM

Well, i already posted my thoughts here but as far as voting is concerned i run a high-profile "creative" forum and i could have had oh lets say about 3-4 thousand votes on my submission if i wanted. Instead, having great respect for all of the creative entries and artists i never considered it. What a shame that some here actually did.

@ydemidov

By martyssweb on Tuesday, 18 December 2007 4:14 AM

well perhaps.
Honestly I agree with what your saying, however the onus is no on crestock and the judges. If the judges ultimately have power and can realize that some entries, perhaps have more votes than are deserved for artistic merit (and yes I'm choosing my words very carefully because my actual opinion is far less diplomatic). Then the nonsense that is going on really doesn't matter. If however, some of the entries with more votes than are deserved end up in the top 20. Then I will need to agree with you it would be a shame.
One other thing, I understand crestock interest is in driving people to their site, and I am all for that, however, it raises an interesting question, is negative publicity ie all the allegations on this thread alone. really good for business, I love the idea of a contest, but honestly, I think one which generates a more positive karma than what I read on this thread has got to be better for business.

By smelkin on Tuesday, 18 December 2007 10:03 AM

Good luck to everyone that took part! I saw some amazing work and I hope the judges pick a great entry =D

smelkin

By avix-gfx on Tuesday, 18 December 2007 10:42 PM

If people ask for voting to their friends in design forums, blogs, deviantart, etc, a huge amount of designers will know about Crestock and probably some of them will remember this page when they need to buy some stock photos. Somehow it's what Crestock gets with this contest, clients who can buy or people who can upload photos/designs for sell.
From the start of this contest you all have seen the rules and you had to expect something like this would happen. There's not any single rule saying you can't upload your work in other sites and talk/ask about the contest/votes.
What I really see shaming is people voting themselves changing their ip address with pieces that will never win.

Anyways seems like judges still have enought power to determine which piece should win, so good luck you all.

Summing up at the end of the contest

By Crestock on Friday, 21 December 2007 3:34 PM

This year's contest is now over and we feel that today marks a happy ending to the overall contest.

We thought we ought to sum up the contest and address some of the comments, criticisms and suggestions that many of you have posted above, particularly in regard to voting.

In theory public voting is a good thing, and it is certainly in everybody's interest, not least the contestants', that as many people as possible get to see the work that's been submitted. On balance, however, we fully accept that on this occasion the negative side-effects outweighed the benefits.

We are happy to conclude that the contest winners won solely because of the quality of their work, but agree that the negative vibes caused by concerns and suspicions about voting irregularities have been unfortunate and should/could have been avoided.

We'll make sure to take everything that's been said and done in this year's contest into account when we plan the contest for next year, hopefully we'll see you all again then!

Real Competition 2008

By kbodesign on Saturday, 22 December 2007 3:40 AM

My thoughts are to make the contest a real contest only use the source images for your art piece. Sure painting and filters but that would eliminate a previous created art modified and submitted kinda like a did to be honest. But it was all photoshop and showed my skills. Voting for a final round for a prize like that in order to eliminate voter fraud which can easily sway judges if the hype is extensive enough should be eliminated. Possibly by only people who submit vote, and have to selectwho their top 5 fellow artists deserve the grand prize. Another side note is having a round where everyone re-creates a complex image only in photoshop with no digital images. This evokes pure skill and cuts out all the bs that is associated with this contest. The top 5% submit there .psd files at a certain size for verification and that would make a Real Competition for 2008.

By ydemidov on Saturday, 22 December 2007 3:58 AM

Advice for next year: Take your time each round and... throw in as much junk as you can. The more stuff you can mash into the final images the better. That stuff can be completely unrelated to anything and your final image does not need to mean anything or tell any story. Just remember - as much stuff as you can. If you can count over 100 various junk items floating around in a fantasy setting - you nailed it. :)

By ydemidov on Saturday, 22 December 2007 4:00 AM

Almost forgot, also don't forget to use as many of your previous works - you know the useless stuff you did some day when you had too much time on your hands. Don't neglect it, throw it in and you are golden.

Any other contest?

By fotograf on Friday, 4 January 2008 2:10 AM

Any other contest in the future? Next year?
I mean it doesn't have to be the same, maybe also some other rules. I like kbodesign's suggestion in comment above.

I like that great idea, challenging, entertaining, educational.