[IF-Designs]

I beg to differ Scott,
One of the reasons they want un-altered photos, and I believe that INCLUDES color correction, brightness and contrast is because you can GREATLY improve if not just out right change the look of your beads with those tools. By just using camera settings and lighting and not changing the image, or submitting an unaltered in any way image and an adjusted image for reference( as the Bead Review allowed you to do do) You show them how True to life your photos really are.

Boro is one case where this is REALLY a problem you can REALLY make an item look amazing with those 3 lil adjustments you mentioned above. Make it look like something it really is not at all. And in my opinion that is why they want the images unaltered in any way. If you cannot photograph your items to show them off then maybe you are using your photo editing program to make them look better than they are. Or maybe you need to really work on that for submitting to these publications. People who have amazing pieces of work are not getting into publications for one reason or another. It may be because of their images because they are not true to life so to speak.

Its easy to make pinks and purples look BETTER and morevibrant with colorcorrection and its easy to make your images look more crisp and vibrant but that is not what the jurys want they want to see your work as is, true to life in the raw and the only way to do that is by being able to photograph it well.

So as I say again I beg to differ but When they say unedited, I do believe they mean, unedited with the exception of format and size(as you have to submit them in the format and size they ask for). So no color correction, no brightness contrast correcting, no dust correction or glare correction so on so forth.

There are printing standards they must meet when sending their books and publications to press and by not having these images adjusted to start with it gives the folks working with the images an easier starting off point for editing and adjustments. Some printers haves standards for maximum black, or color ink density, so on and so forth just as a few examples.