Membership card photos
We need a suitable passport type photograph of you for inclusion on your membership card. Our web based membership application system includes a facility for you to upload a photograph from your PC and to crop a section from that photo to create a suitable image for printing on your membership card. You can use your digital camera, the camera in your mobile phone, or webcam to take the photo. The guidelines below will give you some tips for producing a suitable photograph:
1. Get someone to take a colour photo of you against a plain, light coloured background from about 2 metres away e.g.
2. Transfer the photo to your PC in whatever way you normally do.
The photo must be available for upload as a JPEG (.jpg) - This is the native format of most digital cameras.
3. Resize your photo...
If your camera is more than 5 Megapixel (5MP) the image it normally produces will be too large and too slow to upload, and our sytem will not accept it. In this case the image will need resizing to 1600 x 1200 pixels (don't worry if you don't know what that means at this stage). It should be possible to change the image size from within your camera's settings. Alternatively an easy way to resize your image to the desired resolution, which works for both Windows XP and Windows Vista (sorry MAC users you're on your own!), is detailed below:
3.1 Download and install the free ImageResizerClone from http://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.php?group_id=224498 - Click on the Green button and choose Run. Wait until the installation completes.
3.2 Now navigate to the folder on your PC which contains your photo. e.g. My Pictures
3.2 Right-click on your photo and from the context menu choose Resize Pictures
3.3 Click [Advanced>>]; tick Custom; enter 1600 in the first box and 1200 in the second box;
3.4 Click [OK]
This will create a new image in the same folder with the name (Custom) preceded by the original file name. i.e. if your original image was called CIMG1747 the new image will be called CIMG1747(Custom); this is the image to upload when prompted during your membership application. If you are making a family application you will need to repeat steps 3.2 to 3.4 for each photo you intend to upload.
4. Cropping
Once you have uploaded your photos to our site you can use our online cropping tool to create a passport style image. To do this, move your mouse cursor over the photo (the cursor will change to a small cross) to the approximate point where you want the top left of the cropping area to begin, hold down the left mouse button and then move the cursor so that the highlighted area, which appears, defines the area that you want. You can now change the size of the highlihted area by clicking and dragging the resize handles (small white squres at each side and each corner) or move the entire highligted area by clicking and dragging whilst the cursor is withing the highlighted area.You should aim for something like this:
... which will produce a photo like this:
Correct
5. Unsuitable images
Many applications are rejected because of unsuitable photographs! Below are some examples of unsuitable images:
Image not cropped
Part of face missing
Blurred - usually due to insufficient resolution
Other people in photo!
Not facing camera
Photo too dark