Dusty

Okay, I'm sure I've done this before, but I cannot remember how. I'm using v4.46. The song track is 18 minutes long. The slide show sequence is only about 3.5 minutes long. I want to copy the slides with their transition effects, and paste them until the music track is filled. I hope that makes sense. It's for a community sponsor recognition show to be played before a festival performance. I've tried selecting the slides in the main window, copying, then pasting at the end and they paste exactly backwards. I don't see ta way to do this in the timeline window at all. I need to have this done tomorrow and I hope I don't have to do it the hard way - one slide at a time. This is possible, isn't it? ~Cindy

Thank you! These shows have really helped me expand my wedding photography business. I do a custom show in this same style for every wedding package I offer, and they are a hit.

I just posted my new show "Where Love Is" on Beechbrook Cottage. It is my current portfolio show of my favorite wedding images from 2005. The music, Ubi Caritas, sung in Latin, is from a Gregorian chant and was composed and performed by Connie Dover. I hope you enjoy it! ~Cindy Singleton

I order labels from www.supermediastore.com (USA) but I don't know if they are a chain where you can go in and buy directly. Is that what you're looking for? Meritline.com is another company that has a lot of labels and media, but I quit using them because of too many messed up orders. No complaints with Super Media Store. You probably already know this, but get the glossy labels. MUCH nicer than the matte.

When you go to Barry Beckham's website, be sure to download "Black Country." This show along with Oleg's "Life is Life" really inspired me to the possiblities of PTE and Photoshop when I started creating slide shows. I'm happy to know where to now find "Olga Boritch Photographer", but where can I find "Life is Life"? I e-mailed Oleg a while ago and never heard back. I'd like to see it again. ~Cindy BTW (by the way), IMHO=In My Honest Opinion

I didn't think about the system performance difference. My new wording is: "Show Information: All of these shows are zipped EXE files. They will play on most Windows based computers, full screen, without any special software required. To download a show: right click on the link, choose "Save Target As" and select a location. After download is complete, go to selected location, open the .zip file, then open the .exe file. The show will begin automatically. Press the "Esc" key to quit the show at any time. Shows created with Pictures to EXE and Adobe Photoshop." I know this doesn't cover everything, but the people who I'm trying to guide are the ones who are pretty much clueless about the process (I've talked with them!) and if I give them too much information they won't download anything. Thank you all very much for your help!

Thank you, Al! I'll add that. ~Cindy

Thanks for the help. I'll change the words "double click" to "open." Morturn, be my guest. "Show Information: All of these shows are zipped EXE files. They will play on any Windows based computer, full screen, without any special software required. To download a show, just click on the link, choose the option "save" and select a location to save the file. After download is complete, go to the selected location, open the .zip file, then open the .exe file. The show will begin automatically. Press the "Esc" key to quit the show at any time. Shows were created using Pictures to EXE and Adobe Photoshop." ~Cindy

I've just updated my site and included these instructions for downloading shows. This is how I do it, but I need to know if these instructions are good for the general public. "Show Information: All of these shows are zipped EXE files. They will play on any Windows based computer, full screen, without any special software required. To download a show, just click on the link, choose the option "save" and select a location to save the file. After download is complete, go to the selected location, double click the .zip file, then double click the .exe file. The show will begin automatically. Press the "Esc" key to quit the show at any time. Shows were created using Pictures to EXE and Adobe Photoshop." ~Cindy

I'm a pro wedding and portrait photographer and use PTE to create shows for download from my website. I also use PTE to create a show of the wedding photographs and assemble them together as a story and give to the couple and each set of parents on DVD. Online, I put about 100 wedding images in a gallery for the couple and their friends and family, and this show is also available for download. All of my wedding packages come with this wedding show and I consider it a great marketing tool. IF you go to my site, there is a wedding show there that is VERY close to being updated and replaced with new music and images. I'm working on it now and hope to have it done very soon. ~Cindy

New Years Resolution . . . Patience. Patience is a virtue, afterall. Happy New Year Wnsoft team! I'm sure version 5 will be worth waiting for and I'm happy that it wasn't released pre-maturely.

Hi Ken, I've actually been lurking - somewhat patiently - waiting to jump on the elusive version 5. I'm anxious to work on a new show for my website and would love to use at least the zoom effect for some of the transitions. Here's a link to the before of that shot: http://www.daydreamsart.com/images/before1.jpg and after: http://www.daydreamsart.com/images/after1.jpg I hope the beautiful spirit of Christmas touches everyone this season. Merry Christmas! ~Cindy

A quick and easy way that is better than desaturate is to convert the mode to LAB, delete all channels except the lightness channel, then convert back to RGB (Lab-Grayscale-RGB). Add an adjustment layer (curves, contrast, levels, selective color, etc.). The method Davegee posted is one I like to use, also. My current favorite though, is splitting channels. Duplicate and flatten the document. In the channels pallette, click the arrow at the top right. Select "Split Channels." This will create 3 new canvases. Usually the blue channel is junk but could come in handy depending on the tonal range of your image. Take the green channel and drag it onto the red channel. Add a layer mask (located at bottom of layers pallette) and with a black brush, erase the areas that the green channel is not complimentary. you might try reducing the opacity of the top layer. Add adjustment layers for more contrast. Also try different blending modes. The "overlay" blending mode often works nicely. It's the same principle as channel mixing, but more hands on. Here's an example B&W conversion I did using this technique: http://www.daydreamsart.com/images/wed103.jpg ~Cindy

I'm anxious! I can just imagine the new effects...

Thank you for the response and the link. Very informative. We will send the 2 DVD's with both formats, and the EXE on a CD for good measure.

I'm in the U.S. and have done a slide show for my daughter to send to her friend in Russia. We put it on DVD in the NTSC format and it played perfectly here. Then I checked the PAL box in PTE, then burned it to DVD again (with U-Lead) in the PAL format. Will it work? I didn't do any other changes. The image size is 1024x768. Thanks, ~Cindy

I just added "The Wedding Show" show to Beechbrook. It's been a while since I put a show there and thought I'd add another. I just recently began shooting weddings and this show has images from my first two. I put it together for a Bridal Fair and have since added it to my site. I have more weddings lined up and I may adjust and update the show from time to time. I appreciate all the inspiration the creative people of this forum have displayed since I discovered PTE almost 2 years ago. ~Cindy

I agree with the instructor partly because flash can be viewed across many platforms and most computers have flash now. When I was struggling with a PTE show to be available to Mac users, I came across a program called "SWF 'n Slide". The free trial I tested was junk in my opinion (poor fades), but the concept was good. Create your show, then save it as a .swf file (flash file). I wonder if Igor could incorporate that option into PTE? That would be the best of both worlds. I don't like flash websites, but if I'm downloading a show and know the file size, that's different.

I downloaded the latest QuickTime, then paid $29.99 for the unlock key to upgrade it to the Pro version which has the conversion and editing features. I ended up needing a codec for the AVI conversion that was not included, but downloaded it for free from 3ivx. It was the "filter suite" that was needed. In PTE, I selected "create custom AVI", interlaced video. Width 320 x 240. Audio Codec, "no compression" (I tried others and had problems at replay. Also, OGG did not work, but MP3 did) Video Codec, "3ivx". From that window select "configure". That will bring up the downloaded 3ivx window. Select "single pass - constant quality" and select the level of compression. Anything less than 95% is a drastic decrease in quality which I found unacceptable for this file. Now create the AVI. It will take a bit longer than preparing for a DVD. This show of mine took just over 2 minutes. Open Quicktime, "open movie in new player", find your AVI file and select "convert". Play to check if the quality is acceptable. In that window, go to file, save as, "make a move self-contained". It will give you a file size that will be higher than you want, but that will not be the final size. The extension will now be .mov. Save. File>Export. Export to MPEG-4. In "Options" I chose General, Improved, 320x240, Music. The file will then be compressed to an MP4 which takes a few minutes. The show I did was just over 6 minutes. It can be found on this page of my site if you want to see what these setting did for me. Considering it's for promoting my wedding photography, I wanted it availabe to all viewers, even though you just can't compare 320x240 to the full screen! I know there is a way to compress it with more control and have it availabe for full screen viewing. I did not try all the options availabe, but could not get it larger than the small window without having a file size of 110 MB. Streaming video is also an option but I did not pursue that. There are people on this forum much more tech savy than myself that I'm sure could figure it all out. MP4 will play in various players and seems to be the best thing for video on the web. If someone gets it mastered, please let us know! ~Cindy

I was finally successful in converting the AVI file to a QT movie, then to an MP4 which will play on a variety of players, including QuickTime and Windows Media Player. It's not as great as an .exe file (full screen), but at least Mac users can see the show. ~Cindy

I know that about EXE files, but PTE can export as an AVI file as well which can then be converted to something that Macs can read. Quicktime is one option, but I'm wondering if there are others. Does anyone have experience with MPEG-4? There are 3 options (I'm using v4.20 beta #7) for MP4 and I don't know what the difference is. Anyone?

I need to make a show on my site available for Mac users. Does anyone else convert their PTE shows for those users? If so, how and what do you use? Quicktime Pro is giving me problems.

I am using ULead Movie Factory 3 Disc Creator. I am trying to add an .exe file to play on the computer and the movie file to play on the DVD player. I tried leaving the disk open (box unchecked), then going to the add data section of MF3 after the movie was burned, but I got the message the disk was not empty or there was no disk in the drive! I checked to see if it had finalized afterall, and it was. Then I tried again by adding a folder with these 2 extras included to be burned along with the movie, but it was buried under other folders so the PC did not recognize the autorun file. How can I accomplish this? DVD movie and EXE with autorun file on one disk? Thank you, ~Cindy

Thank you Ian! I will give it a try. ~Cindy

I am interested in doing what was suggested by adding the .exe file on the DVD with the movie file as Ian suggested, but I don't understand how to add the auto run file. How is this done? Thank you, ~Cindy