How to name and size image files for an art submission

What should an artwork image file be called?

Name it so it survives being separated from your email, because it will be. A gallery assistant downloads eight attachments into a folder that already holds forty. Okonkwo_Low-Tide_2024_01.jpg can be identified at a glance. IMG_4471.jpg cannot, and there are already six of those in the folder from other people.

A workable structure is four fields, separated by underscores, with hyphens inside each field:

Surname_Title-Of-Work_Year_01.jpg

A few things that stop files breaking in transit:

• No spaces. Some servers turn a space into %20 and the name becomes unreadable.
• No slashes, colons, question marks or asterisks. A title like Study I/II has to be written out as Study-I-II or the file will not save at all on most systems.
• Be careful with accented characters. They usually work now, but older gallery systems still mangle them, so Bjork is safer than Björk in a filename even though the accent belongs in the caption.
• Number views with a leading zero. 01, 02, 10. Without it, 10 sorts before 2.
• Keep the whole name under roughly sixty characters. Long names get truncated in list views and in some email clients.
• If you need a date in the name, write it as ISO 8601, the international date format that runs largest unit first: 2024-03-11. Files named this way sort into chronological order on their own.

If you already give each work an inventory number, a short unique code you assign to a piece so it can be referred to without using its title, put that first. It is the one field that never changes, even if you rename the work. There is more on building a numbering system in how to number your artwork.

One exception overrides all of the above. If the open call, gallery or printer specifies its own naming format, use theirs exactly. They are usually feeding files into software that reads the name.

Is 72 dpi enough for a digital submission?

Yes, for anything viewed on a screen, and the number itself is close to meaningless. Dots per inch (dpi), more accurately pixels per inch (ppi) when talking about a digital file, is a tag stored in the file header saying how large the image should print. It does not change how many pixels the file contains. A 2000 by 1500 pixel photograph is exactly the same photograph at 72 ppi and at 300 ppi. Only the implied print size differs.

So when a submission form asks for 300 dpi, what it almost always means is: send something big enough to print. The arithmetic is pixels divided by intended print size in inches. A full page in an A4 catalogue is 8.27 inches wide, which at 300 ppi needs about 2480 pixels across. Send a file at that size or larger and set the ppi field to 300 if the form insists. If the request is for a jury viewing images on a screen, pixel count is the only thing that matters.

How large should the image be?

It depends entirely on where the file is going. Four common destinations:

CaFÉ, the US platform that runs entries for a great many public open calls, asks for JPEG files of at least 1200 pixels on the longest side and no larger than 5 MB. That is at the small end of what circulates, and it is a reasonable floor to design around. If you prepare every submission file at 2000 pixels on the long edge, you will clear almost every requirement you meet without re-exporting.

Should submission images be JPEG or TIFF?

JPEG to send, TIFF to keep.

JPEG is a lossy format, meaning it throws away image data to make the file smaller, and throws away a little more every time you save over it. TIFF is lossless: nothing is discarded, and the files are enormous. The Library of Congress lists uncompressed TIFF among its preferred formats for still images held long term, with JPEG acceptable but lower in the order.

The practical consequence is a working habit. Keep one master per view, a raw file or a TIFF, and never edit it again after the first pass. Every JPEG you send is a fresh export from that master. What ruins images is opening the same JPEG, adjusting it, saving, and repeating that across three years of submissions.

Two formats to avoid when sending. PNG is fine for flat graphics and wasteful for photographs, and some entry forms reject it outright. HEIC, the default on recent iPhones, is rejected by most submission systems, so convert before you send.

Set the colour profile to sRGB, the standard colour space that web browsers and most entry systems assume. A file saved in Adobe RGB, which holds a wider range of colour, will often display flat and slightly grey once a system ignores the profile. The reds go first.

How do you get a file under 2 MB without ruining it?

In order, because the order matters:

1. Open the master file, not a JPEG you already exported for something else.
2. Crop to the work. Studio floor and skirting board are pixels you are not being judged on.
3. Resize so the longest edge matches the cap, usually 2000 pixels. Most of a file's weight is pixel count, so this one step does the heaviest work.
4. Convert to sRGB.
5. Flatten any layers.
6. Export as JPEG at quality 80 to 90 on a 100 scale, or 9 to 10 in Photoshop's 12 point scale. That is almost always under 2 MB at 2000 pixels.
7. Look at the result at 100 per cent before you send it. Compression damage shows first in large flat areas of close tone, in gradients across a ground, and in dark passages, where you will see faint blocks or banding. If the work is a dense oil painting, you may get away with quality 70. If it is a pale wash on paper, you will not.

If the file is still too large, lower the quality before you lower the resolution, down to around 60. Below that, edges go soft and flat colour starts to band in a way a juror will read as a flaw in the painting.

What should be inside the file as well as the picture?

Your name. IPTC metadata is a set of standard fields embedded inside an image file for creator, title, date, description and copyright notice, maintained by the International Press Telecommunications Council and read by picture desks and image libraries worldwide. Filling in four fields takes a minute in Lightroom, Bridge or Photo Mechanic.

Most entry forms will ignore it. But when an image ends up on a press server, detached from the email it arrived in, the embedded creator field is sometimes the only thing identifying who made the work. A comment typed into the Finder or File Explorer info panel does not travel with the file. IPTC fields do.

How do you stop the caption drifting away from the picture?

By keeping them in one record rather than two places. The filename carries identity, not information. Resist putting dimensions and medium into it: Okonkwo_Low-Tide_2024_oil-on-linen_140x110cm_01.jpg is unreadable, and the moment you remeasure the stretcher the name is wrong.

Those facts belong in the work list that goes alongside the files, and in whatever you use to catalogue your work. The same list, with values and locations added, becomes the basis of a consignment list when work leaves the studio.

A folder of images and a spreadsheet of details will work for a while. They come apart slowly, usually when a file gets renamed or a row gets sorted without the others. The alternative is a record where the image and the measurements sit together, which is what cataloguing software is for. In Samlio the image lives in the same record as the dimensions and the medium, so a caption cannot drift away from its file. Samlio does not rename or repackage files on export. What you uploaded is what comes back out, which matters if you have already named things properly.

And all of this assumes a decent photograph underneath. No naming convention saves a work shot at an angle under a window, which is a separate problem with a separate answer.

The test for any of it is the same. Put one of your files in front of someone who has never met you and see whether they can write the caption.