Barry Beckham

Xaver I think these types of changes are great for us experts who know PTE backwards and a couple of new changes now and again don't over tax us much. Igor probably has to consider the wider implications of creating a software that while desirable could be over complicated for the new user. I appreciate that it can also be argued in reverse that some sound editing may make the software more user friendly. Now its coming to something, I arguing with myself, who needs a forum

Adda Ever heard the saying Jack of all trades, Master of none. Well, some of those other slide show programs fall fair and square into that saying. No, I agree with FH, lets concentrate on the slide show quality and use a dedicated sound editor for our sound files

Gilbert You can do this with windows. Hit the pause button when an image in your show is on screen. Then hit the Print Scrn button. Open a blank page in your image editor at least the resolution of the images in your show and then hit Ctrl+V You will probably see the image appear, which you can now save and use again.

With respect to Canteau, I disagree with his issue over the size of the images. Size does not equate to the impact and interest of a slide show, unless it was really tiny of course. If I am right Dave you have produced a slide show that will play within a 1024*768 pixel screen and made sure it will not be stretched and the quality destroyed when played on other machines running a higher resolution. I thoroughly support that reasoning and feel it is the right thing to do. I thought the slide show was great and there were lots of places I recognised and the images were good. My only issue would be with your border, it is just a bit too bright for me and it competes for attention between the border and your images. A border should support the images, but here I feel it doesn't quite do that. Subdue it and you have a great slide show.

I have had the same thing and have sent an email to Avast this morning to let them know, sit tight for a while as Limey says they usually act pretty quickly

Be careful it can become quite an addictive program.

Cèlou Don't worry, Your not going daft, it was my fault. I uploaded the file, added my thread and then realised that I had uploaded the file to the wrong place and had to do it again. I guess you clicked to download before enough of the file was uploaded.

I have a slide show that some may be interested in, but it's not for the feint hearted. It is around 150 meg in size so will take some downloading for some. It uses fractals that Greg Gordon told me about. He has a few of these shows on his site www.greggordonphotography.com The software to create them is called Apophysis and it's free. The show had been made for 1280*1024 screens and may not be seen at it's best at other resolutions. Remember, you can easily change resolution to watch a show made at a different resolution and change it back after, it only takes seconds. http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/slideshow/Albedo_0.39.zip

Create image or a blank PNG file, animate that. Copy and paste that file as many times as you want images in the show. (Ctrl+c then Ctrl+V). Then add your images via Add Image in the Objects and Animation screen as a child of the parent. ie add the image with the green bounding box showing around the PNG file. The (child) images will take on the animation of the blank PNG's (parent)

I have booked myself on a science of Fluid Dynamics and liquids in free-fall state 2 year full time course. I can hardly wait I think you both need to get out more

Peter I am very interested to know what you are producing that requires 900 slides and how long you expect it to run for

The flash demo took so long to get to 7% I gave up waiting

And nicely destroy the quality too no doubt

Do a search for the latest Graphics card drivers, that may help. The problem is almost certainly that particular PC not being up to the job. Don't turn off graphics acceleration, that won't help. Almost any modern desktop will run PTE, but a good known make graphics card helps.

Lets be honest, you wouldn't do any editing of a Jpeg image created for a PTE show. UNLESS - that editing was to put right the fact that you had forgotton to add the thin line around the edge of the image as you have with the rest, or forgotton to add your unsharp mask. This is where Ctrl+W is so valuable. All the main editing would be done well before the reduction in size for the show. You would not, or should not make other changes such as levels, Hue and Saturation without going back to the original. (however, as FH says, you can get away with it when you know what your doing) but that statement sometimes confuses newer users of PTE, so it's probably best to always say go back to the original for most changes. We are really lucky these days with the software we have to work with and I think that only those who did a fair amount of darkroom work will appreciate just how fortunate we are. We can now shoot in Raw and edit as a smart object. A smart object allows us to go back into camera Raw from the main body of Photoshop and update, or change the Raw settings we have already used. Talk about have your cake and eat it! It's just like live text and the Fx we have in layers. We can add smart filters and can make changes or mask what we have produced and still go back into Camera Raw if we want to. The route to quality images has never been easier and I use Raw and manipulate as Smart objects all the time. You can make a layer copy of a smart object and rasterize just one of the layers. The other can be opened back up in Camera Raw to change your settings and then blended with the other layer. Imaging that landscape where you can get a powerful sky at the expense of the forground, or a great forground at the expense of the sky. Use Raw smart objects and have both. The command to turn on smart objects is in the hyperlink at the bottom centre of the Raw palette, a little tick box, small, but so important. Smart objects limit some of the editing we can do before rasterising (turning a smart object back to a std layer) and I suspect that in future versions of Photoshop more and more of our editing will be done in Camera Raw

Bob I wonder if the info at the links below are of any help http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/audiovisual/dvd/dvd.htm http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/audiovisual/dvd/dvdprobs.htm

Yes, there is a way round it, but you would need some screen grab software like Hypersnaps or one of the many others

If you highlight any object in the Object section of the O&A, you can hit Ctrl+c and then Ctrl+v to copy that object/text to any of the other images in the show. That way you can skip to the next image and Ctrl+v, then the next and so on. I use this as a quick way to apply a frame to all the images in a slide show. If this was done with text, you could then go into the copied text to adjust what words you want, but size and style would remain constant. However, if we can have something built into PTE for this all the better.

FH No, I was referring to the Time line and the wave file there.

I have a few observations which I am sure have already been raised, but here goes. In the Object section of the O&A screen, maybe a few icons along the top or bottom like Photoshop. Back one and forward one would be a great shortcut to change the stacking order or the ability to drag and drop object layers into the positions you want them, just like Photoshop. Little icons/thumbnails would be great too, so we can see the layer selected. ___________________________________________ Would it also be possible to lock a selected object from the objects section so that no matter where you click and drag within the main animation window the layer selected is the only one to move. When you have transparent backgrounds I often find myself moving the wrong object and the selection switches as I click to drag. ___________________________________________ It would also be good if we could copy either the start or end animation settings to another image or object. I have often wanted to easily transfer the end animation settings to become the start animation settings for the next slide/object. ___________________________________________ If we are going to continue to use Png frames perhaps the ability to copy an object to all images in a sequence, or all images selected perhaps. ___________________________________________ Another thought. What is the disadvantage of having the sound wave file displayed by default. I would guess many users always turn it on as I do and it doesn't hurt being on screen for those who don't. It may also alert newer users of a great tool they can use. ___________________________________________ In the Animation > Pan tab, the up arrow moves the object down and the down arrow moves the object up. Would it not make sense to have them the other way round and then the left and right arrows designed and pointing in the right directions accordingly. ___________________________________________ In the mode section I always think the labels could be better. Fit to Slide would be more descriptive if it was called Fit to Screen. Original could be changed to Original Size, which again maybe more descriptive and there is room for the added word. Cover Slide would then become Cover Screen

DaveG Personally, I would never advise this because opening a JPEG in PS, editing it and re-saving involves a further step of compression and hence loss of quality. You SHOULD be going back to the last saved TIFF or RAW file. That statement is a little OTT Dave, if you don't mind me saying. Your taking some important information and applying it a little too rigidly. Have you EVER seen any evidence of a loss in quality while making a slight change in Photoshop in this way, because I never have and I have done it 1000's of times. The sort of changes you are likely to make once your images are already in PTE are going to be minimal, adding a white, black line, sharpening, selectively softening to defeat moire etc etc. You are likely to lose loads more quality by animating the image, because in most cases you then cannot sharpen it. Don't worry about opening images directly from PTE via Ctrl+W and then taking them back into PTE. I do it all the time with no problem whatsoever. Take a look at these two images. Both have been reduced to 1024*768, no sharpening added. Then one of these two was opened and saved using Jpg level 6 - 10 times. Each time fully closed and opened from scratch. Which one has been damaged by repeated saving as a Jpeg?

John If Tom used the same one as me you will find it below http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/downloads/...tout/cutout.htm This is my claim to fame. I devised this selection free cut-out technique way back in the days of Photoshop 3 and it still produces a cut-out that will stand the scrutiny of a very large print. In those days I used the technique with the eraser tool, but I have refined it over the years as my knowledge grew and Photoshop improved.

Tom Well, I think that is going a bit too far, we can surely make some allowance and the glasses doesn't bother me at all. If you look carefully at many of the shots we take there will some evidence of modern times. Don't beat yourself up over a minor point and there is one thing to remember. When people pick up on the tiniest of issues, it usually a sign that the slide show is pretty good.

Well, after such nice words what can I say? Here's a great tip when your placing subjects like the people into other scenes. Even on the dullest of days we will cast a delicate shadow beneath us and that shadow will be stronger just around the shoe. Add the shadow on a new blank layer, beneath the person layer, using a soft brush, black and the opacitiy set to 1% It makes the world of difference.

A great record of your holiday, but I have to say the music was a bit heavy going for me, given the length of the sequence. I like the classic sounds of Australia, but perhaps a blend of that music and then soemthing more melodic mixed in would have worked better for me. I suspect you have seen our latest here http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/slideshow/Skyland.zip I did make another some years ago and that is not on general release, but maybe interesting for anyone who has a soft spot for Australia. http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/slideshow/australia1.zip