creating thumbnails

[moorestudio]

I am a new user and I am trying to use this program to develop a slide show on a security-safe disc for clients to take with them. My only problem is that I want to also include thumbnails for them to have the option to compare them all at once and then allow them to click one image to bring the slide up. If anyone could help me, It would be much appreciated. I have already searched the forum and found that maderemark had a similar question, but JRR's response didn't provide enough information to help me with. Any suggestions or help would be great. Thank You!

[mhwarner]

Not sure what you mean by "security safe" disk. If they can see the picture on the screen, at the very least, they will be able to capture it -- whether by using the "Print Screen" key or by some other utility such as "Snagit". For what you are describing, it seems to me that you would be far better off creating a series of web pages with thumbnails which link to slightly larger images. That way they could browse through the thumbnails to view individual pictures, or if set up properly, go through a slideshow of all pictures manually. You would then load the web pages onto a CD. There are many programs, some of them free, which allow you to create web pages from your photos. Photoshop itself even has that capbility, though somewhat rudimentary. The one I use is Arles Image Web Page Creator: http://www.digitaldutch.com/arles/ which has a free evaluation download. Another is Image Walker, shareware which also has a free download: http://www.imagewalker.com/ And there is also JAlbum, which is completely free: http://jalbum.net/

The key would be to not make the larger files full size and to compress them enough so that if they decided to print them, they wouldn't get very large (or high-quality) prints. You might also put a watermark on the photos. Here's an example of what I'm talking about: http://www.mhwarner.com/albums/CaballosMar...ures/index.html I arrived at the size for the "large" pictures by doing test prints to determine that 3-1/2" x 2-1/2" was about the largest size that could be printed. I also created a javascript function that allows a click on the picture to make it larger without actually increasing the resolution. It's not great quality, but at least most of the details are apparent.

You can, of course, do what you want in PtoE, but it would be a great deal of work (which is probably why you haven't found any really satisfactory solutions in this forum for the technique) and in the end, I'm not sure it is of benefit for your particular application. Perhaps you could come up with a combination -- a PtoE slideshow to browse and then a series of thumbnails and web pages on disk for closer inspection. But again, in either case, don't fool yourself into believing that the user will not be able to get copies of the pictures from the CD.

[Conflow]

For:- Moorestudio

The subject of 'Secure Copy-Proof CDs' has been discussed on this Forum 'ad-nausium'~

MHWarners' advice is both comprehensive and fully detailed and is extremely helpful and to summerise:-

* If you can copy Photos to a CD-Disc, then others can copy the 'Screen Reproductions' ~

* Those 'Screen-Copy' Reproductions are a poor faxsimile of your origional CD-JPeg Images.

* Lock-Up your JPegs in a PTE.Exe Presentation (which is virtually crack-proof)

* Never, Never burn your origional (individual) JPeg Photos on to the Demo-CD.

TIP

If you really want to go to town about security, may I suggest doing what a German Pro-Photographer friend of mine does:-

* He creates a coloured transparency 'Picture Frame' (many ways of doing this) and when using the PTE 'Object Editor' he imports the Picture Frame and super-imposes it around the JPeg image.

* The Frame dimensions for a 1024 x 768 Screen are, 25mm wide Top & Bottom and 35mm wide Left & Right.

* The Frame is a Gif.Transparency in very pale Blue or Lemon. You can see some 65% of the origional Image with the balance of the Image viewable behind the coloured transparency.

EFFECT

The optical-effect is very good and quite pleasing as one can view the full Image although 35% of it is 'shadowed' by the Picture Mask which is quite impossible to remove. He also parks a small 'Watermark' in the Transparency.

The combination of these makes the Image quite useless for Copy purposes, but still gets the Photographers' demo-message across.

Brian.Conflow.