Photography competition image rules !

hi

I was wondering if anybody can clarify image manipulation for photo competitions

i am new to DSLR and such have the use of RAW now !

now in the guidelines for the our world underwater 2008 comp ( i know the deadline has Gone )

under the Macro Traditional section it says the only things you can adjust are

brightness, contrast, color, and sharpness only

now can somebody clarify this for me because when you open an image in Raw there are so many things that can be changed

i was going to e-mail somebody but i thought i would post here in case anybody else wishes to know

so i use photoshop CS3 with the 4.1 raw converter

so what i would like to know is what can i alter :

white balance ?

tint? i pressume this because it is colour

exposure?

if i can is there anything i cannot use in Raw

also are you allowed to use levels in photoshop?

any help would be much appreciated

vinny

My understanding is that you cannot crop or spot (retouch) the image; anything that changes the colour or intensity of the pixels is OK, adding or removing any pixels is not.

damn, i categorized one of my images wrong. unrestricted vs traditional.

o well

I agree, it would be nice to clarify the "color" portion of the rules. I was working on my pix last minute so didn't have time to ask.

thanks for the replies

after reading what i posted i did not mean it to sound like i was complaining about how the rules

are written !

i was trying to find out what you can and can't do to an image with regards manipulation

i actually entered some images but did not touch w/balance or exposure because i wasn't sure

if that was too much manipulation

i also thought using levels would also be classed as too much manipulation

so aslong as you dont clone crop or retouch the image its fine

just alter the settings that you can in the Raw file and thats fine

cheers

vinny