The gallery has turned into a genuine place for C&C now that they have enabled email notifications.
Now (as I've said twice) they need to make two such places - a gallery with a big notice saying 'Your best stuff - no C&C'
And a dumping ground just for C&C

It's quite unusual in the wider community for all entrants to get comments.
They're usually reserved for some sort of shortlist.
I think we may have to adopt this approach as this forum grows.

If submitters of non-shortlisted images want critique they can ask people to comment after the competition.

It took me hours to write up the comments for last week's competition - I vowed at the time not to bother with the weekly comp, in case I win but I seem to have entered again This time tho, I didn't titivate the image as I just wanted to join in and express my feeling of Yun with the raw smudgy image, so I feel safe

I would agree with most of Davex and add
Prieni for sure! clarity and light.
Lilly for BW and beautiful PP (Paulyrichard for architectural)
Mike-P for prowess with his long equipment.
And where's our Polish friend with his street shots? forgotten his name

If there was a section for makeshift use of old tat off of ebay maybe I would have a shot ha ha

I haven't washed my K10D or lenses since getting them 2 years ago.
If the lens element is dirty I use my shirt bottom
Believe me, my kit has been in some 'orrible places, but just seems to self clean... except when shooting with fisheye, 4 inches from wet skateboard wheel, then the shirt got pretty sodden keeping the front element clear.

Grotty handgrips? try washing your hands

I think faststone only displays the jpeg preview - 8 bits per pixel = 24
I think the raw files are 12 bits per pixel = 36
Think that's right.
HDR images are 48 bits but need to be rendered at 24 on screen

Faststone will also create a standalone viewer for you to package with your CD of images.
So you can be sure that your friends/family/clients will see the images the way you intended, fullscreen, rotated correctly and with the proper colours etc.

All my web clients get offered a copy so they can manipulate their images themselves and upload them to their e-stores etc.

Oops, sorry Barrie just noticed this.
Yes, that's one of the crops I tried. It look striking like this and if you were stood in the middle of the pier the railings would be symmetrical at the bottom.
The sky looks a little odd here but a different sky with no clouds would look great. Aren't the colours great?

The old burnt out area now looks a tad dark. I'm being super picky here, but it IS usually quite bright.

You're gonna hate me Amin... that area looks too dark now

It's one of the prominent, distinguishing areas and it is often very light.

But that's definitely the best process of the two.

I'm sticking my neck out a bit here but...

JPEG is a set of procedures to compress the image. Amongst these, I think the two culprits here are averaging and perceptual sacrificing.

I'm a little unsure about the details. But averaging attempts to combine or group as much data as possible. Causing the characteristic blocking - just watch something on Sky to see this at work

And perceptual makes decisions about what the human eye will or won't notice and discards as much 'useless' data as possible.

Feel free to correct me