Photoshop Competition Editing, a Free Manual for Camera Club Photographers

Every judge can spot an over-processed print from the back of the hall. Not one of them has ever seen a layer stack. They see a halo along a skyline, a sky pushed a shade too blue, or a projected image that looked crisp on the computer but soft on the screen. Each of those is a decision made in Photoshop, usually weeks before the competition night.

Adobe Photoshop for Photographers is my free 103-page PDF manual on Photoshop competition editing. It takes a photograph from the first layer to the final submitted file, non-destructively, and covers retouching, dodging and burning, masking, sharpening, output sizing, Content Credentials and the current PAGB, FIAP, PSA, RPS and BPE rules on manipulation and AI.

If the techniques are so well documented, why do good photographs still get rejected in the first round?

What Photoshop competition editing actually involves

Photoshop competition editing is less about clever techniques than about applying ordinary ones in the right order, on layers you can still change after the judge's comments come back. That is the answer to the question above, and it is the spine of the manual.

I wrote it for camera club members and experienced hobbyists who already edit in Photoshop. It does not explain what a layer is. It explains why a Curves layer belongs in Luminosity mode, why frequency separation needs different settings for 8-bit and 16-bit files, and why a sharpened file loses that sharpening when it is resized for projection.

A named Curves adjustment layer above the original. Section 02 builds every edit on this kind of structure.

The sections follow the order I apply them to an entry. Section 02 sets up the non-destructive structure that everything else depends on, and I would ask readers not to skip it. The sections that follow cover:

• Ethical retouching, dodging and burning, colour and tone

• Selections and masking, frequency separation and sharpening

• Time blending, perspective correction, gradient maps and the Nik Collection, for the photographs that need them

• A repeatable competition workflow with three worked examples

• Output sizing, Content Credentials, submission and the competition rules

Select and Mask with Color Aware refinement, from Section 06 on selections and masking.

Made with my own photographs

Every figure in the manual is made with my own photographs, and every instruction has been checked against Photoshop 27.11, the September 2026 release, with Camera Raw 18.7 and Nik Collection 9.

The cover came from the photography holiday I tutored in Puglia this September. The vases on the steps caught the light in a way that needed almost no work, which is the whole point of the manual. Good competition editing should leave a photograph looking as though it was captured that way.

Vases on the steps, Puglia, September 2026. This frame became the manual's cover.

Using my own work matters for a reason beyond pride. A screenshot of a technique applied to a stock image tells you the technique exists. A screenshot of a sharpening setting I actually used on an ornate ceiling, viewed at 100%, shows what the setting does to detail a judge will look at closely.

Smart Sharpen at 100%, from Section 08. The manual gives settings for screen, projection and print.

Silver Efex in Nik Collection 9, run as a Smart Filter so the conversion stays editable.

The rules on AI and manipulation, in one place

Every competition body the manual covers excludes generative AI, and what counts as acceptable retouching changes from one category to the next. Section 15 summarises the PAGB, FIAP, PSA, RPS, and BPE rules side by side, so the question of how much editing is too much has a written answer rather than a club-night argument.

Section 14 covers Content Credentials in Photoshop and what they record about your edit. If you want the background first, my post on C2PA for photographers explains how the standard works.

Export As with the size, colour space and Content Credentials settings from Section 13.

At the back there is a printable Quick Reference and a one-page Competition Entry Check. Print the checklist and run it before every submission. It catches the small things, an embedded profile left as Adobe RGB, a file a few pixels over the projection limit, that otherwise cost an entry its place.

How to download the manual

The manual is free. Follow the link below, add it to your basket and check out with no payment, and the PDF downloads straight away. It is yours to keep and to print.

Download the free manual

Download it, print the Competition Entry Check, and run it against your next entry before you submit it. If a judge's comment still catches you out, tell me in the comments which one. That is how the next edition gets better.