stonemason

Hi Gary the following is the procedure for creating a picture icon using photoshop. 1 Open your chosen image and crop to a square format. 2 Go to image>image size and resize to either 32 x 32 or 16 x 16 pixels (I used 32 x 32) 3 Go to image>mode>indexed colour. You then get a popup window which you can leave as defaults but check "Preserve Exact Colours" also make sure that colours says 256. (I'm going to try and upload a screen shot but this explanation is in case that fails) 4 Then File>save as> .ico format. Make sure you select .ico not .png from the addin popup You should then be able to use these in your exe slideshows. Hope all this is of some help. Geoff

Hi Gary I think that the problem may be with the number of colours in you image. As Peter say's further up this topic .ico files are very strict in their requrements. I have just assigned a 16 X 16 transparent icon to two of my shows with no problem. The icon was created in photoshop using the icon addin. I will try and create one from a picture and let you know how I get on. Geoff

Jean as Peter says icons are used as shortcuts. or included with exe files in some cases as in pte shows. Windows also uses them to indicate file assosiations by placing the icon of say media player in front of a music file. You can also use icons on a web site to replace the "e" for internet explorer in the address bar. these are called favicons. To see an example of a favicon take a look at my web site, the GS in front of www.geoffstone.com in the address bar is a transparent icon. Geoff

For those who have photoshop, and wish to create icons now and then but do not want to install any extra software for this purpose, there is a freeware addin at http://www.telegraphics.com.au/sw/#icoformat. It adds the .ico extension to the save as choices in photoshop. I have tried this in cs3 and it works fine. Even created a transparent icon to use as favicon on my web site. I can't say if this works in elements as I don't have it installed, however the web site say's it does work with paintshop pro so I would think that there is a good chance it will work in elements. Geoff

Hi Yachtsman1 yes we use the headphone out on laptop and line out on the PC. Out of curiosity why do you want to use the usb port? Geoff

After some discussion earlier in the year on this same subject our camera club purchased one of these http://www.jaycarelectronics.co.uk/product...=&SUBCATID= We have used this in a large hall with passive speakers from a hi fi system with excellent results. The only word of caution is that if the speaker cable runs are long use a good quality thin wire. Regards Geoff

Thanks for the reply , but no I am aware of these features the enquiry is about the mac equivelent of .exe files regards Geoff

Hi Igor Have you any idea yet when windows PTE will be able to output mac compatible executable slideshows? Best regards Geoff

Igor have you any time frame in which this is likely to happen? Geoff

Have a great day Igor and many thanks for all you do for us Best Wishes Geoff

Thanks Brian we'll sign off on this for now until I have the opportunity to have another go at the drivers. Best regards Geoff

Thanks for all your efforts Brian I appreciated your time. When the laptop was bought it came with vista pre-installed, and was like swimming through treacle to use. I re-formated and after much chasing around the web and Dell forums to get the correct drivers (Dell only support Vista on this laptop) I installed XP Pro sp3 and it is now a nice computer to use. Apart from this small problem it has been error free. The strange thing is that it will play a DVD film with no sound problems. It seems to be just when .mp3 or PTE files are played, which also use .mp3. The laptop is primarily used for course / office work so it's no great probem really, however I'm still curious to know why. My wife's in the middle of a college course at the moment so I don't want to do anything which may make the laptop unstable. When she's finished I will try re-installing the sound drivers. Regards Geoff

Brian I copied the files from my computer onto a usb stick and then from the usb stick to the laptop. Played an audio CD on the laptop and it played OK. Sorry for leaving you a bit short on info. Regards Geoff

Brian I'm a bit confused. As you will see from the above answers to your questions the slide shows were copied onto the HDD and played from there. I'm at a loss as to how the CD/DVD drive would have any influence on the playing of the shows? Regards Geoff

Hi Brian 1) Slideshows copied to hard-drive and played from there 2) Vision was perfect 3) Dell Inspirion 1721 The "glitch" sounded as if there were millisecond breaks in the sound file, and appeared in a random pattern ie no specific time between each glitch. Happened around 10 times in a 4 minute show. These shows all play perfectly on my own computer, so the finger of suspision is pointed firmly at the laptop. Regards Geoff

Thanks Lin I'll re-install the sound drivers and see if that helps. If not then I'll take a look at the usb device. Thanks for your time. Regards Geoff

Igor any idea where I might start looking?

Igor, The shows were created using 4.8, 5.5 and with 5.6 they all play perfectly on my desktop PC, so I am sure it is a problem on the laptop and not with PTE but I do not know where to start looking. Geoff

Played some slideshows on my wife's laptop, (Dell Inspirion) and noticed that I was getting a glitch in the sound at random intervals. The shows were created using various versions of PTE, including 5.6. Pictures and transitions were faultless, and I know that all the slideshows play perfectly on my desktop PC. The laptop is about 6 months old has 512mb graphics ram 2gb memory and 250gb hdd. The graphics is ATI whereas mine is nvidea. Suggetions as to what may be causing this would be most welcome. Operating system is XP Pro SP2 regards Geoff

Hi John take a look at Lupas Rename http://rename.lupasfreeware.org/lupasrename.php It's freeware, very small and will batch rename just about any way you want it to. I use it alot and it saves me a great deal of time and effort. Geoff

Lin & Peter many thanks for your help got it sorted now. Lin thanks for the sample that helped a lot. Many thanks Regards Geoff

Hi Peter just watched Kaleidoscope, stunning. I envy you PTE expertise and your creative skills. Regards Geoff

How do I get a picture to zoom behind a png mask but the mask stay in the same position. I tried to do this but the mask zoomed with the picture. Thanks Geoff

Brian I couldn't agree with you more. There is a market for this type of software, as camera clubs grapple with the digital changes. My own club (www.rdps.co.uk) run a national competition attracting over 2600 images this year. We are fortunate in that we have an "access guru" as a member and the database he has developed drives the whole competition including the projection of the images via a third party viewer and a two monitor setup on the pc. The pc monitor shows the access window, and the images are projected via the second monitor which is the projector. This works extremely well, and also handles all the paper work and finance for the competition. We are fortunate in having this guy as a member, and that he has been prepared to spend many hours developing and refining the system. Hopefully someone soon will take up the challenge of marketing something that will become standard across the camera club world. Regards Geoff

Hi Gary current wisdom is that you should not have two hardware accelerated exe files running at the same time, which is what happens if your menu continues to run in the background, while your slideshow is running. What the technical reasons are I'm not sure, there are others here better qualified than me to give you a technical explanation, which I'm sure they will if they read this post. If not then PM Brian conflow or Lin Evans and I'm sure they will help. Regards Geoff