JudyKay

I've seen enough recently of poverty, hatred, hurt and loss of war, and enough of compassion and pain to know that if anyone here merely fell off their bicycle we would all forget our little misadventures and run to help the one who skinned their knee or feelings. Maybe I should post a show of the orphans of war and trafficking. Maybe that would be too close, too horrifying, too painful. Pride is an awful beast--win over it with love. I admire each of you in your own way, foibles and all. I trust you can do the same for me? Together, if we hold hands, we can make a perfect circle. Down with PBS! Let the the Beta testing games begin!

Spell check in Asian languages and fresh hot Noodles, please.

I have been many places in the world, but never UK. Yet. Maybe one day!

Barry, I enjoy your work and probably seldom thank you. So here it is. THANK YOU!!! :)

Many years ago I tried a few free screen-saver creation programs. Some programs made a sort of slide show as well. All very simple. The one I liked best was P2E, but you had to pay a little something for it. It came with a lifetime-upgrade promise. A lifetime is a long time, and I imaged some improvements might be in store--but at least I had a program I could probably use for a few years. Then Igor got busy. He really made P2E into something amazing. While the program still made screensavers and slide shows it became a totally different product. For years, faithfully, I got free upgrades anyway. Software development takes time and money and Igor and Friends have to making a living, so if development would continue at such a pace, more revenue would be needed. Presently, there is a sort of gray area between what is an old product with a life-time upgrade promise and a very different new product--a sort of distant cousin to the original product which we have to buy. Because the old product wasn't phased out and upgrades ended, while a new product with a new marketing plan was introduced, I got a sense of entitlement. Hey, anything WNSoft produced I ought to get for free for a lifetime? Why not? When I learned the policy had changed and upgrades were no longer free, I felt a bit miffed, like trust was broken. I also realized that a lot of communication can be lost in kind, generous business practice and communication across languages and cultures. Here is how I think we should fairly think about this whole lifetime upgrade vs. now-you-have-to-pay-for-it matter: There was a great old product. Pictures to Exe. It had a good life with free upgrades for life--as long as the product was developed. Eventually the lifetime of that product ended. A new very different product was developed which in many ways resembled the old product. At that point Igor in magnanimity just kept on giving away a new different product to users of the old product--bless his heart. My opinion is that the new product should have had a new different name. The old name and product should have been retired. The new didn't get a new name, and the old wasn't retired. Now we have a sort of reincarnated product with upgrade entitlement from its former life. The cure might be to find a business way to formally retire the old product. Lay it to rest in all its glory. Then market a new, fresh, better product with a new name. Version 1.0. Perhaps this should have been done a couple years ago, or maybe it's not too late yet. Maybe Igor thought all this out and has his own reasons for doing things the way he has. Maybe he is just really really nice and some of us (me included) would love to get entitlement to freebies for life at his expense. I am a parsimonious, miserly, closefisted, covetous old scrooge--scrimping, scraping, clawing--and don't part with money easily. I finally upgraded after a twinge of annoyance. Now when I look back I feel embarrassed at my former greed and ungratefulness. I am very grateful for such a wonderful new product. Thanks Igor! I love P2E.

The slide samples you have provided appear to show diffraction or reflection, possibly from the glass and your lighting setup. Darken everything around. Stop ALL the extraneous light and allow exactly the light you want. I use artist's lightproof black flocked fabric for this. You might get much better results. It's work--decide if it's worth it. I have scanned many slides including glass slides with excellent results using a scanner. I also created an elaborate camera/tripod/lighting/ macro lens method complete with a black felt hood and special home-made negative and slide holders for odd sizes. Final analysis: The camera can do a great job, especially by stitching together multiple photos, but nothing equals the output of a good slide scanner--if you really want a fine, sharp job. Often the detail and quality of old slides and films does not warrant so much fuss, but occasionally it might. I use the OpticFilm 8200i Ai Scanner with SilverFast iSRD scanning software. But it's not cheap. And it's not fast if you have thousands of images. The combination of dust/scratch removal including the use of IR is almost mind boggling. For most photos dust D/S removal you can do fine in Photoshop, but for some photos, that IR scan really works miracles that Photoshop can't touch. Learning to use it well is not for the faint-of-heart. There is some learning curve to take advantage of the scanner and software's abilities. Like many hours of frustration and disasters before you feel like a beginner. Having said all that, right out of the box and pushing the buttons it may do a beautiful job on most of your images. For 35 mm and smaller only. You can be creative about getting odd sized film inside the machine. The software will make you wonder what kind of sadist invented it, but if you can tolerate its idiosyncrasies, nothing else out their can match it. Kind of like Photoshop. I have a few folks who help with scanning (I have little patience for such things), but my scanner has scanned some 15,000 images and is going strong. If it had been available back when I bought, I would have got the OpticFilm 120 for the larger negative capability. But, alas, I didn't. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/890953-REG/Plustek_783064365642_Optic_Film_120_Scanner.html More info on other options here: http://www.filmscanner.info/en/PlustekOpticFilm120.html

Thanks everyone for the feedback. You have cleared things up for me. I do keep original 18 MP RAW photos. While traveling I export images with the long edge set to 1920 at original 4:3 aspect (not really 1920 X 1020 as I said) unless I have made some other crop--and then ship jpg's to various locations for safekeeping/use (my def'n of "archiving"). I prefer not to have to reprocess someday... I remember when 640X 480 was awesome and new and we couldn't imagine needing higher that that. And now, open a 640 X 480 image on your 30" 2560x1600 screen--and just try to find it. I do imagine that someday the images will be used at 4K. The retina display on my iPad is so fine that I can't imagine needing much more detail---my eye at least couldn't discern it. But blown up on a screen the size of a barn, maybe....? PS. Yes, I do take a lot of photos. I am working hard on increasing quality over quantity and slowly improving, at least in the quality area. My most recent wedding (I don't prefer wedding photography, but do some when rooked into it) only had 800 images. Years back I used to shoot 1500-2000. But most of those 800 images were pretty good. Very few throw-aways. So there is hope!

I am not exactly sure how 4K plays out with normal monitor resolution or if I am thinking wrongly to think in terms of "normal monitor" resolution. I create my slideshows and archive my photos--roughly 10,000/year as jpg's at 1920 X 1080 thinking that is good enough resolution for anyone for a good many years to come. I archive as reduced sized jpg because these photos all have to travel internationally via internet. When 4K came along, I hardly shrugged, thinking it only had meaning for large screens on the wall. Depending what camera I use, most my photos are shot at 5184 X 3456. I do keep original RAW images in Lightroom. When photos are selected for magazines or other professional uses I provide the image as a full sized tiff according to whatever spec's. What do you think? Is archiving jpg's at 1920 X 1080 good enough? Should I be archiving at 3840 X 2160 pixels? 4096 × 2160? Or something else? ​I can re-export the whole mess from Lightroom over a couple days of course--just curious about your thoughts.

I'm sure you all saw this: http://www.wired.com/2014/08/killer-software-that-finally-stabilizes-shaky-gopro-videos/ and this (which is not software): http://gizmodo.com/5993678/this-new-camera-stabilizer-could-change-cinematography-forever

Anyone could find these, but here they are anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennett_College_(New_York) https://www.google.com/search?q=halcyon+hall&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=opTwU6eHFs_poASGpILIBw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1280&bih=644 http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/money/2014/05/13/bennett-college-lands-bought/9036929/ http://opacity.us/site11_bennett_school_for_girls.htm

I hope I am not hijacking this thread, but kinda hate to add another by the same name. Can anyone think of a quick easy way to select every nthslide to make it easier to create time lapses videos?

Whew! I have used ribbons in all Office products for a long time now and couldn't dislike them more. Thanks for the effort that went into your suggestion, Abdol, but I shuddered to look at the picture.

I Loved the Anna story. Thanks!

You're the cute old mature guy that makes everyone around you Happy Happy Happy! Eneregtic. Always up to some mischief. Always finding some reason to dance and get other people dancing.

Something about this made me think of you

What a wonderful luxury to be in places and situations where you can shoot with a tripod or even be able to carry a tripod. Sometimes we can. Other times we use rocks or poles or our unsteady hands. Just because it isn't shot from a tripod doesn't mean it cant be high quality professional work. Those of us who have no choice but to shoot this way are very grateful for image stabilizing software.

I use all three. I just wondered if you had any light to add 1. Bridge is a better "Browser" even if terribly antiquated -- unless you import photos into LR. Then there is nothing else like LR for browsing. 2. Bridge is better for producing multi-page/object PDF's 3. Bridge is better for quick RAW editing of smart objects 4. Peter mentioned the advantage of a Bridge collection to PS Layers stack 5. Bridge is better for coordinating multi-media compilations I can't think of any other advantages. In every other way, Lightroom is immensely superior to Bridge. I am not throwing Photoshop into the equation--it is a different creature for a different purpose. Not sure why they even need compared. I guess there some overlap as your PDF indicates. Actually Bridge works just fine independently of Photoshop. You should know that. http://helpx.adobe.com/bridge/using/adobe-bridge.html Users who have Bridge but have never used it would likely perform 95% of the same tasks far more easily in Lightroom. Guiding such people to Bridge may be a few years outdated. This is what Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowsi say: http://scottkelby.com/2011/100-ways-lightroom-kicks-the-bridge-and-camera-raws-a/ Those still wanting an introduction to Bridge will find a lot of value in your excellent PDF document.

What can Bridge do that Lightroom cannot do better?

...and I love your photos. Thanks.

Wish I could have bought your 16-35--just one of them.

I also know that country well and How I miss it!

I use Chrome with adblockplus. No ads ever from mediafire. Its barebones clean and just works.

Thanks! This is good progress. How are you guys so smart? This is way better than Picasa ever had!

Now, how about a transition pans, zooms and that also dissolves from one slide to the next?

Thanks to both of you. You are wonderful even if you hadn't fixed my problem, but you did!