Welcome to PhotoJudge!

Let us Introduce PhotoJudge to you!

PhotoJudge is an application that provides a complete web-based solution to manage photo competitions. Although designed with the typical Camera Club in mind, it uses a universal approach that allows any organisation to launch and manage web-based image competitions. PhotoJudge comes with the following features:

Competitions that can be created, edited, judged and presented. PhotoJudge covers their entire life-cycle. Members and, if allowed, external contributors can upload their images to open competitions.
Online registration.
A database containing all members, judges, administrators and external (non-registered) contributors. Details can be uploaded from a csv-file created in Excel.
Remote judging by individual judges from their desktops or live judging where a member (usually a volunteer) enters their scores and comments.
Competitions can be set up to be judged by the membership, rather than by appointed judges. Members cannot judge their own images.
Presentation of completed competitions online.
Collection of entry-fees through PayPal. A properly set-up merchant account of your club or organissation is required.
Member-Galleries.
Image searches by keywords.
Members can like other members' images that were entered in a competition.

PhotoJudge is a low-cost alternative and is completely free of 3rd party advertising. It was written in PHP and mySQL (both are Open Source) which helps to keep costs low for enhancements or club-specific customisations. PHP is server-based, secure and used in about 25 million domains. To ensure maximum integrity, stability and robustness across platforms, Javascript has been kept to a minimum. The application has been tested in major browsers, in Windows, Android and IOS.

How to try it out for my club?

Contact us by phone or email! You can try it out for 60 days without any charges or commitment required. We will provide a subdomain like yourclub.photojudge.net along with an administrator ID and password. You will start with a clean database. You can then add and edit competitions, invite photographers to log on and upload their images, and upload your existing users or contributors via an Excel spreadsheet. You can run a competition beginning to end (create the competition, allow contributors to upload their images, have the images judged and present the final results). As images are added to the database, you can try the additional features provided, search for images by keyword or let your contributors create their own galleries. Administrative functions are provided to let you review the membership, upload images on behalf of a contributor, enter results from an offline judging sessions, and clean up and database.

Hosting and Responsibilities

PhotoJudge can be hosted

at your own website. All web-pages, subfolders and empty mySQL-tables will be delivered. We can assist in this process until it's clear to go, after that it is your responsiblity to maintain it. A one-time license-fee of $299 (Canadian) applies.
at the vendor's service provider (currently Ethical Host) in its own domain. Domain fees and hosting charges will apply in addition to the cost of PhotoJudge itself. On the other hand, support will be available both for the hosting part and the application. We need your input to provide a detailed quote, but generally it should be in the $200 - $500 (Canadian) range per year. The one-time license-fee is still applicable (see above).

What is currently displayed?

What you currently see on this website is a demo-club (not a real one) that has been set up with a handful of members, contributors, judges and image-competitions, some judged, some not. None of the names of persons in the database are real people. Every effort has been made not to show recognisable people in the images on display. Some titles and comments appear senseless and were just entered to test special characters, as the application supports UTF-8 characters, which includes special French, German, Scandinavian and Eastern European characters.

The banner on top of every page and the content of this page (index.php) will be customised for each club that acquires PhotoJudge. Further customisations are possible but will have to be analysed and discussed case by case.

What can be seen and done by who?

The current setup allows:

anyone can search for images, and view completed competitions and member-galleries.
anyone can register as contributor.
anyone logged in as member or contributor can submit images for open competitions that are not restricted to members.
anyone logged in can like images of other members or contributors.
anyone logged in can view, transfer or remove their own uploaded images as long as the competition has not been closed for judging or presentation.
members only can submit images for open competitions restricted to members.
members only can set up galleries.
members only can judge their fellow members' images, if the competition has been set up to be judged by members.
judges only can judge entries in competitions they have been assigned to judge.
administrators only can upload members, create and close competitions, assign judges to them and view, transfer or remove all competition entries. On the other hand, judges and administrators cannot participate in competitions. If they are members at the same time, two profiles can be set up for them, one as a member and one for their special function.

This setup can be customised to particular requirements, but again will have to be analysed and discussed case by case. An email address is always required as it is key for all persons that are set up in PhotoJudge. It has to be provided and be unique. Refer to the Admin page for further details.