Barry Beckham

I am confused, whose hackles have been raised by such a non controversial question. I hope you don't think it was me because I said why bother. I only asked why bother because I wonder how an upgrade on a mac from W7 to W10 will impact your making of slide shows with PTE?

If you're only using Windows 7 solely to make PTE work on a Mac and it is working ok, what would be the point of upgrading to W10? PTE will work fine on W10, but what is the gain from upgrading an operating system just to run PTE.

I wonder sometimes if you have gone so far with PTE, that you have difficulty looking back to a time when you didn't know A newer user of PTE will think of that option straight away, I'm sure

I don't think it matters what slides have been used in the style, just that a style has been applied. It also has to be remembered that the vast majority of users will have no interest whatsoever in rubic cubes or anything similar. So, I am not sure a rubic cube is a good example to use to suggest the idea has little merit. Presumably, Styles were introduced to speed up the workflow for those who need to repeats things. That's exactly why I use them and I say that being able to know if a slide has a style or is animated wouldn't be a bad thing. Is it vital, especially at this time? No, but nice to think about for later? Yes Anyway, as I have said before, there is only one person we need to convince.

Would it matter though? I have a few slide styles I use each month where graphics are applied to a blank. All the shows in the slide list is a blank and there is no indication that an image will appear and its not a traditional blank. It then makes it difficult to know where a visible slide is in relation to a real blank slide. Having said that we don't have notification in the slide list that animation has been applied either and we all seem to get on OK with that. Is it a big issue? No, would it be nice to have? Probably, but it would also have to show in the Time Line too. I personally rarely use the slide list and do everything in the time line

This could be a suggestion for Igor, because I think you have a point Craig. I can normally tell by looking at the thumbnail, but not always and if you add a slide style to a blank slide it just shows blank. A small S in the corner of the thumbnail would do it

Thinking about it, Content aware crop isn't really new. It's been there for a while now in the form of Content aware fill. Adding it to the crop is a good choice and speeds things up, but it was there.

Your welcome

It does seem a little odd on SSC that you can add a review and a comment and they live in different places

Larger images shouldn't cause that, I have made shows with images directly from a 20mp camera and they work fine. Re Installing is the first step. some years ago I had a pal with a similar sort of issue and it was a jpg image that seemed to be causing the issue. It took us ages to find the one, because it showed up ok everywhere you expected it to.

I think you will find its the usual false positive

This concerns those using Photoshop Creative Cloud – PC version The latest version of Photoshop Creative Cloud is now available for update. Just click into your red creative cloud logo and you can download and install the new version in one operation. This is a major upgrade and if you have any third party filters installed, they will not be migrated over to the new version of Photoshop 2015.5. So, I have recorded a short video below for anyone who may be a little wary of what needs to be done. Migrating Third Party Filters from Photoshop 2015 to Photoshop 2015.5 I trust its now safe to mention Photoshop on this forum

Dom I think you need to give your styles a wedding theme, because what you are producing is just the sort of thing a wedding photographer will need. It would help promote PTE too

This AV all came about because of a Ransomware virus that hit my wife's computer 2 weeks ago. Strange how things happen, but we have a good manual backup regime and we recovered from that problem within a day. It meant I had to get out some old disks and external drives to replace the images on her computer that were lost. While doing that I decided to take advantage of the much bigger internal hard drives I now have in my PC That has 3*3 T drives installed apart from the SSD for the OS. So I loaded up some old raw and jpeg files from up to 14 years ago and took a look through them. I picked one, did a bit of digital doodling with a civil war battle scene and liked the result and suddenly the idea was born. The effect consists of Topaz Impression filters (more than one and a reasonably amount of Photoshop work, but nothing you would call hard or difficult. Sometimes the path I selected for a particular image didn't work so well, so I dumped it and took another tack. That is the nature of filters and photography in general I suppose. You win some and you lose some. Some of the images were portrait so they had to be amalgamated with landscape ones to fit. The images come from a re-enactment of the English Civil War that are carried out all over the UK during summer by the Sealed Knot Society. Going back many years we used to go to lots of them and Health and Safety has spoiled it a little for photographers. Too many Hi-Vi jackets and day-glow tape to make sure none of us stub a toe However, it just means we have to work a bit harder to avoid them

The Civil War

The thing is, we all use PTE differently and if we got all our own pet requests added, the software would be the worse for it. I have always taken the view, make a suggestion, but live with what Igor and his team finally decide. I must admit there are other things that I think would be of greater benefit. The software works pretty well now, just as it is and as many photographers are very fond of saying with regard their chosen software. It meets all my needs

Dave Good points and I think if we are being truthful. We the users don't even think much about that. We hope the creator instantly understands what is required and supplies it. I just assumed (dangerous I know) that a PDF would show a snapshot of everything that is destined to be displayed with that image. Most animation is showing by the time the image is about to be changed, so perhaps a snapshot there? Even with our original enthusiasm, the amount of use this option would be put to, in relation to the development time and cost, needs some thought I guess. We cant have all we wish for

For those using PTE for a live presentation, it could be a benefit to be able to have a hard copy reminder of what the presentation consists of. Also, being able to see what is coming up next before that slide is seen would make a great memory jogger too

Mike The trick is the make your final slide show greater than the sum of the two parts (music and images) and to try an create a little mood if possible. There are a lot of ways to do this, but with a pictorial slide show like yours its the images and the quality of those images that are driving the creative process. Your goal should be to create a smooth flow between images and to do nothing that will interrupt that flow. That's why many have already raised the logo on your images because they do just that, spoil the flow. Some of the most common ways to try and achieve this is to keep all your images the same size and aspect ratio and 16:9 seems to be the standard these days. With landscapes, try where possible to line up horizons and don't mix and match landscape and portrait format images. As Dave says above investigate the third image, it has the potential to lift the appeal when done right and on a more personal note, use the standard fade 99% of the time Music is the real key, because if the images come first you have to find some music with that special something, but it has to be able to work in harmony with your images. A brass band and beautiful landscapes are not likely to combine well enough to create a show greater than the sum of the two parts. This is easier said than done, but try to avoid obvious and common music choices. Some delicate sound effects can often help with a mood, but its a very fine line between something great and something awful The rest is just putting your heart and sole into it over many days. Watch your own show twice a day and see how many days pass before you start tearing it apart. When you stop tearing it apart, then its time to show the world Welcome to AV

Its now doubled up in the suggestions section Ken

+1

Ken I have one thought, but it might not even be an option for your project, because what I will suggest does take away a lot of your flexibility. However, I use multiple voice files every month for an ongoing club project and I find it easier to use software like Camtasia to stitch all the sound comments together quickly and easily and add them as one For the project I do it works a treat and I don't need that flexibility for the style of presentation I am putting together. However, if I make a mistake and have to slot a voice comment in, it can be a pain. A right click to a selected image, as you suggest from the file list may encourage me to work from individual voice recordings in the future and retain the flexibility.

Mark When you select a Mac version from the Publish menu, there is an option to create the Mac show in zip. Its right there next to where you put the file name.

Barry Making a small slide show to get your head around the software is an excellent idea and its a shame others don't always follow your logic. The PicturesToExe project file on its own in isolation from the images and sound is useless to you. All the project file does is to tell the software what images/sound was used in the show, where they are located on the computer, what transitions were used, for how long and what changes may have been made to the sound. I know that making assumptions is dangerous, but I will do so anyway and assume that your motives to saving the project file off the computer to an external drive is for safety reasons. To give you access to that slide show any time in the future? There are a number of ways you can come at this, but one that I have used for some time is to create a Bakup in zip, which can be found via File > Create Bakup in Zip. Do this once your happy that your slide show is complete.What this command does is to take all of the images and sound you actually used in your slide show. All the settings, transitions, absolutely everything including the important project file and wraps all these essential files into one zipped folder. That zipped folder can be saved to any location on or off your computer. From this bakup in zip you can always open your slide show and find it just as you left it. Ready for recreation, editing, anything you like. One vital thing is that when you make a slide show, keep everything you want to use in one folder. The windows operating system your using is not relevant to making a backup in zip I made a video tutorial on this subject quite some time ago, but its still relative to what we do now. Just ignore the fact that I was working from 3 folders with my slide show. Stay with one as its probably safer. Download HERE The video also includes the making of a template too.

I think your main issue is asking others their opinion? What do they know that you don't?. Have you seen some of the slide shows made by those who may give you the advice? With regard to music I try to avoid the obvious. Take Enya for example. Beautiful music, lovely to listen to, but so many slide show creators reach for Enya because its easy and convenient. However, they pay a price for that easy option choice. Its a choice I avoid. Why do images shot in China have to have Chinese music, why do Thailand images need Thai music and so on. Break the mold and use something completely different and to hell with those who tell you it must be Thai. music. By all means use a little of it to set the scene, but go with what works and not what is expected by the masses. Music is personal. Making an AV in the style you do is a creative experience like an artist painting a picture. The artist doesn't have a crowd around them offering advice. They create something they like and they accept that they will not produce a masterpiece every time. Perhaps you are trying too hard to win the competition and you need to step back and enjoy the process more.