Dusty

Thank you Shelia! I found your show and downloaded it to my husband's PC since I'm on a Mac. Loved it! And that song worked perfectly with your show as well! Crazy minds think alike

That was amazing! Looks complicated to put together, but so fun to watch

Thank you Davy!

Yes, I used flash to backlight the flour and another flash to fill from the front. And we had to let the dust settle quite a bit since it would get too hazy, so keeping contrast wouldn't have been possible with video. I re-arranged the slides out of sequence to create the illusion of a fluid dance. An actual dance never even took place, just the model releasing handfuls of flour in various poses. Thanks for watching

I don't make slideshows as often as I used to, but when I do, I come visit this forum to find reminders on how to do them! This one is on YouTube and is the result of a project that involved making a really big mess in my studio. It turned out kind of cool and I thought some here might enjoy it, so I've attached a preview image and here's the link -

I have 83 slides that must fit in a song track that is 4:22. It's been awhile since I've used this program (version 4.46). I checked the box for "Synchronize slideshow to music duration" but it doesn't have any effect. I purchase an upgrade to the deluxe version last May, but then lost my hard drive and the reg key with it. I've got a ticket into support, but for now, I'm stuck with this older version. Can someone help me? I'm trying to create a slideshow and get it onto DVD for my daughter's wedding this weekend, so I'm kind of rushed. ~Cindy

After a PC disaster last year, I upgraded.... to a Mac. PTE was the one thing I dreaded leaving behind. Recently I've been nostalgic about some of my old work and slideshows, and thought maybe I could upload to Vimeo since YouTube was not a good option. After problems with that, I checked to see about upgrading my old PTE and was so happy to see an option for uploading to Vimeo and YouTube. I've checked out some of the shows some of you have put on Vimeo and the quality looks great! So I guess I'll be looking through the tutorials and learning how to play the new bells and whistles and maybe have some more fun once again with PTE. It's nice to see some familiar names still around here

I took my camera to the local display the other night and posted some on my Blog. I used a 20D, ISO 100, 24-70 lens set at 24mm, f/16, and shutter set to bulb. I used a tripod and a remote shutter release. It was too much fun! It was a spectacular display. When I'd see the firework start up in the sky, I'd click the shutter open, and hold it open until there were more fireworks to fill in the area of the sky I was aimed at, or if there was just one explosion, I would close the shutter after a few seconds. If many were being set off, I would release it sooner so explosions would not cover each other up as being overexposed. I had the camera set to take vertical shots because I wanted the light trails going up to the explosion and also to show height in the sky. Painting with light! ~Cindy

Thanks, Tom. They do list pages. I just checked and for some reason, it's now listing individual .zip files along with the html pages loaded. I had sent them an email, so maybe they adjusted something.

I just transferred my site to a new server, and their statistics report does not list the individual downloads of shows from my site. I called my new server and was told there was nothing they could do about it. Does anyone here know of a way I can track downloads of zip files?

Thanks everyone! I'm so glad you liked the show. I like your idea, Al. I'll remember it! I stuck with my newly engaged couples for this show, but I do have married and even long time married couples I've done the same style of portraits for, so someday I'll put together a show like that. I called iPowerWeb who hosts my site and they were very helpful. Like Lin said, the code is ad related. It counts hits on my site for hits for them, I have no idea how that's good, but it's not a virus that damages someone's system. There is a program out there that when a site is targeted, it will automatically try every word until it gets in. Scary thought. The tech helped me pick a password that would be a lot more difficult, so hopefully that problem is solved. The actual java script code on my page which does not have frames looked like this <script language="javascript"> document.write ( unescape( ' -----------")); </script> The "-------" was actually several lines of numbers and % signs, and was all above the <html> tag. Stevie, I don't use any actions for that look. I do shoot in the RAW format which I feel helps a picture to "pop" more, and process in Adobe's ACR which really helps boost the contrast. I usually boost the contrast a little bit more in Photoshop via contrast, levels, curves, or selective color adjustment layer.

Now if that wasn't disturbing!!! Thanks for the heads up. OMG. I did check my home page and there was some real freaky java script at the very top, right before the html tag. I've replaced that page with my original index page which is why you didn't get the warning, Ken. I also went through the rest of my index pages and could not find it anywhere else. Now I need to find out how it happened so it doesn't happen again. Stevie, thanks for the compliment and the heads up.

Hello! I've just uploaded a new show of some engagement portraits I've done. File size is 21.3MB and can be downloaded at: http://www.daydreamsart.com/engagementshow.zip No, it is not created with the cool version 5. Not a lot of PS tricks in this one either, just a simple show that I hope will make you smile! ~Cindy

Thank you for the links and interesting reading, Lin! Al, I agree. PC's are so cheap, I'd bet many Mac users have one under the bed! ~Cindy

Thanks guys. I feel good about my response then. Is the estimate of Macintosh being 3% of the world market documented somewhere? I'd love to link to that in the future. Actually though, PTE is probably the biggest reason I have not switched to Macintosh. This is how I responded to the first post which I believe to be a kid who recently learned to build basic websites and now thinks he knows everything, and is trying to get business from users of this particular wedding photography forum I frequent: "Give me a break. I would have expected better advice from you. I've been offering exe shows for years and have had thousands of downloads. As a professional trying to impress potential clients, why would I offer shows with viruses? My current portfolio show, "Where Love Is", has been downloaded 2,774 times in the past 12 months. My show "Dancing Dreams" has been downloaded many times more than that over the past several years. My client shows get downloaded by their friends and families without any worries. Instead of using the rule "never" and closing all doors to the good things the internet has to offer, a person needs to educate themselves and secure their system by installing a firewall, virus and spyware protection, then use them and keep them current. You should be careful with ANYTHING you download. Be sure it's from a source you trust. EXE files are not the only extension that can be infected, there are MANY many more. As I said, flash is good. I personally don't care for the showitfast look, but then I've been spoiled with the quality of an exe show. I don't have the time or inclination to learn Macromedia right now to design my own flash shows. Maybe someday. The majority of my visitors and potential clients are PC users, and many apparently trust me." I did not respond to the second post, since I would have been repeating myself, not to mention I considered his comments just plain rude. BTW, less than half the downloads of the portfolio show I mentioned have been from Beechbrook. The rest have been from direct visitors to my site. Same with Dancing Dreams. ~Cindy

I'm always promoting PTE for online shows because of the image quality, smooth transitions, and simplicity for viewers. However, I recently ran into a couple of people who disagree. I did respond, but I'd like to know how others here would have responded. "NEVER offer .exe files for download. (unless you are showing off your software programming or something) as they can so easily be viruses very VERY few visitors would (or should) take the risk." and: "You must have a lot of very ignorant clients for them to be downloading .EXE's from your website! It's not safe and plain old bad practice. Any literate computer user knows it's stupid, and it's just plain obnoxious! Not only that, but you alienate your Mac users -- a big no-no. " ~Cindy

Thanks, Al. And yes, I loved being able to be a part of it. ~Cindy

Thank you guys!

Wow! Beautiful. Thanks for posting that, John. This is the first time I've seen version 5 in action, and it was great to see all the different possibilities. I couldn't get it to play properly on my old beater PC I use for internet (Windows 98, 128MB RAM) but I moved it to my other PC (XP, 1GB RAM) and it played beautifully. Satin smooth transitions. I hope I can learn to use v.5 as well as you when I finally get the courage (and time) to tackle it. ~Cindy

Thanks, Lin. I agree completely about the music. It was a pain. I did use Audacity, and that was the only place I could cut the song. I added more pictures so I could cut it there, but there was no room to fade it nicely because the music picks up and it sounded weird to me. Maybe that would have been better, though. I tried stretching the last word of that part of the song (changing tempo), but that didn't sound too good either.

Some of you responded to my question regarding a sponsor show I was working on for a local festival. That show worked out great and the sponsors were well recognized. Now I'd like to share with you the actual festival! It's called the "Idaho International Dance & Music Festival" and has been going on in Idaho for 21 years. Three years ago, our local community had it brought here and I took some pictures for fun and gave them to the committee. Well, now I am on the committee and this has been my 2nd Festival as the official photographer. It's all volunteer and non-profit. I do get some name recognition, but that's not why I do it. It's a fun change of pace and a good thing for the community. I spent about a week and several long nights taking pictures, doing the post work, and getting ready for the next day. I did an AV show that played on the big screen behind the teams for the finale dance, which was comprised of photos taken that day and the day prior. That was hard. I also gave each team's director a DVD of hi-res photos from 2 days of festival, which totalled almost 600 pictures. The finale pictures and more are on the show I've posted online. I believe that forums such as this and International Dance Festivals hold the keys to world peace! You can read more about the festival and find show and gallery links on my blog at http://daydreamsart.blogspot.com or just download the show directly from here at http://www.daydreamsart.com/festival2006/f...val2006show.zip It is 22.7MB in size. Thanks! ~Cindy

Yes, I did custom synchronize it. That's what I was hoping to copy. I ended up doing it by hand, but it is all finished now. Thank you for your help everyone! I'll try to remember this for similar projects in the future. ~Cindy

I think I'm getting closer! I downloaded that program. I followed Jean-Claude's instructions, but the duplicated sequences have both time columns set to 0.1! For instance: a transition originally set at 3.5, (FADE), (2.0) is duplicated as 0.1, FADE, 0.1. Now what am I doing wrong?

Thanks. What is Sy(P)? and where can I find it? Will it copy the transition effects, too? I wish there was a way to copy the timeline and paste it there. Ronnie, the reason looping won't work is because the music track is several songs long. Looping it (as far I know) would loop the music, too. That's 18 minutes long, the slides are 3.5 minutes long. The "hard way" started with coming up with this recognition show in the first place! ~Cindy

That works, in that it duplicates the slides. But it doesn't duplicate the effects and timings. I did get them to paste in the right order. After copying, I clicked on the last slide and pasted, which put them before the last slide, but I just moved it back. I'd really like to keep the transition effects and just duplicate the whole thing if that's possible.