jevans

Hi Ed, Hope you do not mind some more questions. The whole subject of colour management seems to be fraught with difficulty. I have read several books on the topic but do not seem to be much wiser. I have a 19 inch Iilyama LCD monitor with brightness, contrast, phase, colour temp and gamma settings (plus some positional adjustments etc. of course). I assume that when you buy a Spyder, the colourimiter sits on the screen and the associated software calibrates the display against a known standard which is provided by the software. In this process, the software adjusts the monitor settings and perhaps also the video driver and video card. The software also produces a "profile" for that display unit under the conditions existing during the measurement. So assume I have done that and have a calibrated monitor with its profile. Now I take the colourimeter plus software to our club and go through the same exercise with our projector. The club computer is different (conventional CRT monitor and different video parameters). Also the lighting conditions are different. Will this exercise produce a reasonably consistent colour rendering between the home LCD display and the club projected display? Regards Jeff

Ed, Interested in your post because of your reference to calibrating your monitor and using the photo club projector. I am thinking of buying a monitor calibration kit (maybe Spyder2). However I have no control over the projector settings at my photo club and hence, even if I have a calibrated monitor, showing the PTE shows at the club (or any digital images) is dependent on the projector settings. So why bother to calibrate except for the satisfaction of having consistent colour settings at home. Jeff

Really liked the lamb coming out of the frame. That's a great idea. Jeff

Hi John, I have had the same problem as you and solved it using Al Robinson's "PTE_Adjustor" spreadsheet which enables you to make global changes to the Mode parameter. Jeff

You maybe need to explain your problem in a little more detail. If you use a sound editor such as Audacity or Adobe Audition, you can combine a number of separate sounds into a single sound track. Then you can attach this to a PTE project and adjust the slide positions in the timeline so that they match your soundtrack. Jeff

Also Barry, the converse is true and is the default setting. With the box unticked, insertion of slide in the middle of a show, moves all the subsequent slides along to make room for the new slide, and most importantly, also moves all the associated pzr effects for each slide as well. Jeff

Heather, Lin has answered your query about re-sizing your images. That will work ok of course. But there is another approach you can use. In "Project Options", the "screen" tab, you can set the aspect ratio of the standard PTE image to a range of default values, one of which may be the same as your images. In addition, you can set up your own custom aspect ratio to match your images. Then the "fit to slide" option will not do anything as your images will be the same as those in PTE. Jeff

Gary, Yes ok I agree it is a bit confusing. Not sure that I can give you specific answers to your questions now. However I am just about to start to update the original guide I prepared for the timeline of version 4.48, so in doing this, I will get a clearer idea of the various mechanisms, and will try to write these up in as clear a manner as possible. Jeff

John, Maybe I am wrong, but some of the replies appear to me not to be answering your question. What I think you are asking is .... If you have a series of images in a particular folder and then start to make a PTE show in which the images used are in this folder, AND THEN, without creating a backup zip file, you do some folder re-organisation, your PTE show cannot find its images. If this is your problem then the answer is you should not do this. PTE like many other similar software, creates a link to the images it uses. Now if you move or rename the source data for the image, PTE does not know what to do and says, "where have the images gone". So, if you want to do some folder re-organisation in the middle of preparing a pTE project, just zip up the project and, when you have finished the re-organisation, unzip the project into its new home. I have found by bitter experience that ALL the images and associated files for a project should be in the same directory. I use Adobe Audition for my sound editing and its creates "session" files. I need to keep these all together to avoid getting in a terrible muddle. Best regards Jeff

Hi Lin, Results of your experiment using Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT card with 256Mb RAM. Mostly smooth as silk except for : 1. A little jerk when the first pan starts 2. Another when direction changes to zoom into chimney stacks at the end of the first long pan to right 3. When you zoom into the chimney stacks and change from the initial images to a new image taken with a longer focus lens, the subsequent zoom has some very small hesitations All the rest of the pz direction changes are very smooth. I know this is a test to assess performance limits, but from a purely ascetic point of view, you have obviously exceeded the maximum zoom ratio for your initial image sizes. I assume in an actual show, you would not zoom an image to more than 300% to avoid pixellation. Regards Jeff

Gary, The answer is fairly simple. Suppose you are making a slide show with commentary. You have selected all your slides and have written the commentary. Now you record the commentary and find that the commentary for a number of slides differs from the default time you have chosen in PTE. You then need to move selected slides to match the commentary. The spreading of slides equally across a sound track is only used for relatively straightforward presentations. For many shows, individual slides have to be positioned to match the sound track. Most of my shows involve commentary. I record the commentary and position each clip in Audition to a specific time. I then add the slides one at a time to match the commentary intervals. The show is still synchronised but the slide intervals are not equal. Jeff

John, Just tried this by zipping up a project and transferring to a USB memory stick. Then deleting the original directory on my C:\ drive. Unzipping the project on the USB drive produces all the files and PTE will run the project. All seems to be working as it should. Jeff

Al, Yes I can break into the loop without a reboot. have tried it again with another test file with the same results. have sent uou a separate email with the test PTE file to see if you get the same results. Regards Jeff

Al, Have downloaded new version and tried the "objects" facility on a test PTE project. Adjustor gets the object data ok and changes the Mode to any of the options. However when I press the "transfer" button, the screen switches to the data file, the file data flashes as if changing the data, but it just goes on and on and never stops. I had to exit using Cltr + alt +del to stop the program. I am using Excel 2000. Regards Jeff

Al, It's just because you are opening the "cutomise" options with the music tab selected. You can still select any of the other tabs. at least that is what is happening with me. I can customise any slide in the normal way. Jeff

Hi Dave, I used Cs2 and no longer have PS7 installed. Wait and see what Lin's experiment produces. Be very surprised if it is a bug in PTE. Jeff

Lin, Re inserted child text not adopting the same parameters as its parent, I understand your comment about the need to vary opacity, but it seems a little illogical that the O&A "text" object is the only one that does not inherit opacity from its parent. All other objects, including the rectangle and button objects inherit all parent parameters. There is no problem in this, it just does not seem logical to me. Jeff

I have tried this using PS CS2 and have found no problems. I can load all three images into PTE and they all display. Regarding DaveG's comment about the use of gray scale, once you have converted an image to gray scale, you have discarded the colour information and it cannot be retrieved although you can still tick the RGB box.

Al, I am sure we both know what is happening so this is not an attempt to prolong the argument. However I think it does not matter which mode you use as long as it is the same for the image and the text. Your post started with the point that you had different sizes of text from Photoshop and I wondered whether you were adding text produced from different size original masters. I have been caught out with this before. You make up some text and produce an image with a certain pixel dimensions and then, later, produce some more text but with a changed pixel size. although you may have used the same font size, then end result will be a different size of text. Jeff

You two have me puzzled. In the first instance, Al is preparing text in Photoshop and presumably importing the resultant png file into a PTE image. In this case "text" is not being added but an image and the ability to rasterize the "text" is not valid or available. If you create text in Photoshop to add to an exiting image, you should create a blank transparent image in Photoshop which has the same pixel dimensions as the image you are going to add it to. You then create the text and size it to your required size. Next you save as a png - keeping the ORIGINAL pixel dimensions - do NOT crop. Now if you add the text image as a child to the main image, the text will be the same size and in the right place and any changes to the main image in the O&A window will apply to the text as well. Lin - if you use the "add text" function in the O&A window, you can of course rasterize it. But added as a child to the main image, only some of the properties of the main image (e.g. pzr) are imherited, opacity is not. AL - Why are you creating text in Photoshop instead of just using the text function in the O&A window. Then you can size and position it to whatever you want. Admittedly the text function is somewhat limited compared to Photoshop but it is a much quicker action. Jeff

This is really a question for Igor. There are a number of default setting parameters defined within PTE. For example in the "objects and animation" window under the "common" tab, the default setting for "mode" is "fit to slide". Question : Are these defaults defined in the .ini file, and if so, can this file be edited to change the order of the defaults, e.g. change "fit to sldie" to "cover slide"? Jeff

Thanks for the information on show control. I did not realise it was so easy. As far as aspect ratio is concerned, I am surprised no one has commented on this in the forum. I have had some discussions with Al Robinson on this subject but he does not like to use the "cover slide" function. For me, I prefer to view a show in full screen mode and thus would like the "cover slide" function to be a global setting and not just on a per slide basis. I have added this request to the thread on features for the next version. I shoot in RAW, convert the RAW files to DNG and then batch process the resultant files to produce images suitable for PTE. It is difficult to crop using a batch process and thus I just resize the images to 1530 x 1024 and then use "cover screen". You lose a small part of each image at each side, but you can pan these into view if they contain essential information. Jeff

Hi Paul, I am far from being an expert, but I have made many shows and the MOST difficult part is always selecting the music. First of all having access to suitable music and then deciding what goes with the pictures/story. Generally if we are away somewhere, I try to buy a cd of local music. This is what I did for our Welsh visit. Jeff

Hi Paul, Really good show. I particularly enjoyed it since we stayed also stayed in the Lleyn peninsula three years ago and I made a similar show. Very good photos and I liked the beginning sequences. Maybe you could have used more Welsh music and the ending was a little abrupt. But very enjoyable. Definitely one to keep in my library of other's shows. Regards Jeff

Ken, I thought that there was no sound. However once the show has started, if you press the spacebar, the show starts to run continuously and the music appears. Jeff