Barry Beckham

I have just published a pdf on the subject of Digital Infra-Red I have been involved with photography all my adult life, but I have found this a very interesting subject with a few surprises I didn't expect. There are options open to us to create near infra-red images, but converting a camera seems to be the way to go. What does it entail? What are the results like? What are our experiences?

Perhaps Igor may consider treating the creation of a slide show like exporting an image from Lightroom When the Publish Show window pops up it has all the create options listed and the user just ticks the ones they want. If you're familiar with the image processor in Photoshop you can select to save a Jpeg, a Photoshop file and a Tiff file while applying an action to convert to sepia for example. Those publish options could then be saved as a user pre-set.

Mur I find myself a little surprised at your words above. Moving images around a screen, no matter how fancy the animation is, doesn't improve the images. I am surprised that you think it might?

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I don't think the thumbnail helps a great deal to understand OAK Did you not download PhotoShop and learn it? No, I was introduced to Photoshop (on disk) many years before software became downloadable. A good friend bought a very early version, Photoshop 3 I think? (may have been earlier) So, well before I put my hand in my pocket I had a pretty good idea of what it could do and if I would like it, which I think most people still do today if they can. Did you know all about what it could do for you before you worked with it, or did you take the word of others who had worked with it that it was something you might find useful? I had seen it on my friends computer and had the opportunity to play around with it quite a bit. I ended up teaching him how to use it. I eventually got Photoshop 3 or 4 I think. Upgraded to the next version and from then Photoshop supplied me with future copies right up to CS-6. You bought it at great expense too, didn't you? No, it wasn't too bad back then. I got a free early version with a flatbed scanner (which I only bought to get Photoshop) then upgraded at my own cost to PS4 or 5 for something like £120 if my memory serves me right. The great thing about a forum is you can learn by other peoples experiences and views. In fact, isn't that what forums are good at and why we participate. You don't have to take everything that is said as gospel, but you can get a pretty good idea of what the software can do and perhaps decide if it may be useful. Whether that involves payment or even if the software is free. I don't seem to have the time or the inclination to gather software on my computer and then learn it without having some idea if I may find it useful. I doubt there is enough hours in the day to do that anyway Having said all that I have been wrong before and will be wrong again, so never say never is my motto. Your right, OAK may offer nothing to my style of PTE use, but then again, it might. I am trying to get a feel for whether OAK is something I may find a use for. I will wait to see if users can throw up some examples of how it has helped them, maybe even the odd slide show demo.

What is the purpose of OAK? Globally visualize, manipulate, modify overall temporal data of all objects in a slide issued from PTE and synchronize objects to the soundtrack with the help of Audacity. As clear as Mud Sorry mate, but your just talking jargon. Perhaps the many Oak users can all write just one line in a thread that spells out in layman's terms what they get from OAK. I am interested and willing to be educated, just in case I am missing something I shouldn't. However, I do not have the inclination to download a software add-on and learn it just to be able to tell if it may be useful or not and so far I ain't convinced. I want to hear from the many practical users of Oak - Keep it simple folks and explain.

Jean Claude Can you please remind members what OAK is? Who Makes it? and what advantage you think is has for us? Never having used it I did a search on the forum, but cannot find a definition, but I do recall something about it some time ago. How many members use it? Perhaps everyone who does can just add one line that explains what it does for them. It will give members a better idea of it's advantages re Today the majority of users of PTE are part of the "silver economy" even if the "twilight" may be far for them. We are constantly told that the aged make up a larger and larger part of any population these days. If they are the majority of your customers, move away from them at your peril. Perhaps?

Fair enough, but lets hope your right

This slide show was created by Bob Godfrey I met Bob Godfrey through the slide show that I have published in Slide Show Club soon after settling in Australia. Bob had been in photography most of his life and when I saw this sequence shown in an AV competition I contacted Bob and asked if I could show this to some of our UK friends. Not only did he agree, but we became mates and we had some great caravan/photography trips together during the past 5 years. Sadly, Bob had a long term illness that took him from us in June, he was 72. Bob was always keen to share his audio visuals and he would love to know that even after he had gone, he was making people smile. I think this slide show sums up the Australian spirit and particularly Bob's. I hope it makes you smile too Creation for PC and Mac

I appreciate my style of audio visual creation is a little old fashioned and I am not into complex animations as much as others, but I have to put forward another view. The thought of using a spread sheet to create a slide show would bore me to death. Personally I need to see and hear what I am doing when placing images to music and I have a suspicion that most others do too. .

That's great news and while I also asked for a floating mini player in the time line some time ago. I am not so sure it's necessary now. Given the flexibility we have to easily reduce a 5 minute sound comment or music track to 5 seconds, we can always use the same track a number of times. So, two music tracks and three sound effects may only need to take up two tracks to be fully workable A Mac version, a 64 bit version and a dark interface sounds enough to be getting on with

Igor It's not the design of the screen, but the fact that I have now grown accustomed to those lovely dark tones that Photoshop, Elements and Lightroom uses. When we view images on a screen that darker tone is far nicer in my view. Its the same colours as the new option in Slide Show Club I was working on a PTE project where I had a number of sound files in the time line. That meant I had to drag the time line up to see them all and that left lots of white areas on screen that is not the best when you're trying to view the mini player, which is quite small by then. Photoshop gives us parameters to set the depth of tone of the software and I think PTE would be nicer to use in those colours and it would make it look bang up to date. I have attached a screen grab of the PTE project I was working with and one of Photoshop.

As Igor says PTE does not require and internet connection to run. The fact that your copy seems to be effected is either a coincidence or something is blocking it. Virus program perhaps? Also, if you have not already done so, download a new copy of PTE, in case the one you have is corrupt in some way

Try another re-install, but right click the picturesToexe-setup and select run as administrator. A long shot, but not something that will take more than 5 minutes and you never know. I have had to do this myself once with another software program

It was just a few minutes ago while working on a new slide show in the time line that a thought occurred to me. I have multiple tracks on screen so the Mini Player is quite small. This leaves lots of white areas all around and I would love to be able to change the whole look of the screen so it looks like the new Slide Show Club, or Photoshop. Kill all the white that is almost dazzling for a more subdued colour, one better for our creativity and one that would make the software look state of the art as well as being so. What about adding images on the fly via a keystroke while in full screen playback mode. How neat would that be?

Back in the old days of film, we always had the issue of using portrait and landscape format images into the one slide show. I always approached this as a creative challenge and used masks to get a sweet fade between the two formats. It often included square masks, some with soft edges and oval masks were attractive too. I am not sure if I am being an old dodo here and some may say I probably am. However, isn't it these creative aspects within PTE and other software that are open to an individuals interpretation and creativity? Isn't it these things that provide the interest, the variety and the charm of a well made slide show? Perhaps its just me again being old and out of date, but I don't want my creativity delivered to me in a box, the same box delivered to everyone else too. If there's nothing to learn in our software because all eventualities have been catered for, it ain't worth having, because everyone else has it too.

Well, this issue seems to be one for Igor to answer. Is it possible to make this a global function, does the time and cost of programming it (if its possible) stack up in relation to its potential use.

As suggested, probably the way to go with that is via a mask, but I doubt you're going to get the software to automatically do this for you if the images vary in size. Using layers would still be the way to go because you can create a new document at your slide show size and then cut out a hole in the background to accommodate your image behind it. Save it as a Png file to preserve the transparent centre part and it can be placed over your image in the Object and Animation screen. As long as you create the hole at the smallest size you want the image to be, your free to animate the image behind the matt/mask. In fact, you can take this a whole lot further and create a real Matt effect that looks as though your image is sitting beneath the matt/mask

just as a technique to have a black border all the way around the images and to show a border on each image. I must be missing the point here because this seems a complicated way to add a border to an image. Forgive me if I have grabbed the wrong end of the stick. I would use Photoshop/Elements layers to do this so that I could create each image on it's own layer. The free transform controls allow infinite size options to create the border to each image. I can see the effects of what I am doing before I save the layer as an image for the show. I also get to see and adjust how the shape of one image will look with regards to the next one in the sequence. Especially if the images are not all the same size. A Border stroked line can be applied to each image with a simple drag and drop technique from the layers Fx. Maybe portrait format images can be prepared side by side on one page if required. It allows an attractive layout of a number of different sized images and helps to create that all important flow to the images created. For Photoshop users, a simple action can be prepared to save each layer as a separate image and even allow you to name each one in sequence.

Still doesn't alter the fact that if you want to study images, go to a web site, if you want to see an AV, then don't expect to be able to stop it every few seconds.

some members think when they put a show up to the forum it is the end all Well, perhaps it is the end for them. Not everyone goes down the local shopping centre at midday and has a slide show posted by 4pm. Some people actually take a lot of time and trouble to get everything just right. personally I very seldom watch shows where I don't have control Then you're missing out on some of the best shows posted and that is your loss, because really good ones don't come along that often.

You're enthusiasm for this improvement is coming through loud and clear in your text, so it must be impressive. Looking forward to that.

Judy, sorry, I am hanging onto the other one, its my favourite lens

Snapcam The reason no-one comments is because some people have got every upset in the past if the comments were not completely favourable. This is our hobby and its just too tiresome to make a comment with the best intentions and get abused for your trouble. The natural reaction of most people will be, why bother. I am about a thick skinned a person as your likely to meet, but even I take that view too.