Colour or black and white?

Your photos will appear on your web page in the colour in which you supply them. So, if you supply a photo in colour, it will appear on our website in colour.

Please remember that fair hair on a light background or dark hair on a dark background does not reproduce well.

Landscape or portrait?

On your web page, images may be displayed in an upright or landscape format. All photos will be cropped to a 10x8 ratio for optimised viewing on our website. Please see the following links to see how each format is actually displayed in a gallery on your web CV:

What kind of photograph is acceptable for Spotlight?

We reserve the right to refuse any photograph on the grounds of content or quality.

Principal Photo

Your principal picture should be a high quality head and shoulders portrait photo.

Portfolio Photographs

The purpose of your Spotlight portfolio is to show casting professionals a variety of different looks, it is to show your versatility as a performer. A bad quality photo makes you look like a bad actor so if the quality is not excellent, don't use it!

Remember, Spotlight is a casting directory, the only people looking at your portfolio are those who are looking to employ performers, they do not want to see your holiday photos or photos of an inappropriate nature.

Portfolio photos should be

• Excellent quality
• Current
• A true likeness
• In costume
• A still from a professional production
• Showing different looks (eg different hairstyles) (with or without facial hair)
• Have minimal digital enhancement

We will not include

• Holiday photographs
• Amateur photographs
• Photographs taken on a mobile phone
• Modelling shots
• Editorials /Advertorials
• Nude / inappropriate photographs
• Composites
• Photographs featuring weapons

Hard copy or digital?

We accept both formats - although digital photos are quicker for us to process.

How do I submit photos to Spotlight?

All photos, however they are supplied, must be clearly labelled with your name, the name of the photographer (copyright law) and your performer type (e.g. actress, dancer, presenter, etc).

Submitting digital photographs

Once you are a member of Spotlight, by far the quickest way to submit additional photographs is to sign in to www.spotlight.com and upload photos online. Your photo(s) will appear immediately.

You can also email photos to [email protected] or supply a disk in the post. You must also complete and send a multimedia form at the same time. Please do not send us your original disk, always make a copy. It can take us up to 1-2 weeks to upload photos on your behalf, so if you want your photo uploaded urgently then you should sign in and do this yourself, as per the above.

My image is too big to upload. What can I do?

Sometimes if your image is very large and your internet connection speed is slow, it may mean that it is impossible to upload your photo. This can happen if your photographer provides a very high resolution image; which is perfect for printing 8x10s but a little too big for use on the internet.

There are numerous ways that you can reduce the size of your images.

• Using different operating systems / different programs

Programmes such as Photoshop, Adobe Bridge, iPhoto and Paintshop Pro all have the ability to change the size of your images, however if you are unsure of how to use these programs the task can be quite daunting. There is information in the help menus of these programs, and many tutorials available online to tell you how to do this.

• Over the internet

Sites such as the examples below will actually resize your photos for you without having to download or install any new programs on your computer. You simply upload your image to the site, request the size you need your image to be and click a button. It really is that simple!

http://www.shrinkpictures.com/ is a very simple site. If you do use this site, make sure you choose custom size, and keep it at 1000px.

http://www.picresize.com/ is another useful site. Again when choosing the size, use a custom width of around 900 pixels, you don’t need to worry about setting the height.

Please note: Spotlight does not recommend or endorse either of the sites above. We regret we are unable to offer advice/help when using them.

Just make sure you don’t go to the other end of the scale and make your photo too small!

My image is too small. What should I do?

If your image is too small, it’s not just a simple matter of resizing it to make it larger.

Making a small photo larger will only result in the image looking blurry, out of focus and/or pixelated. The likelihood is that it will get rejected by Spotlight anyway. The best thing to do is to contact your photographer and ask for a high resolution version of the image.