Reflections of Rocky Mountain Parks

[Lin Evans]

Can "Reflections" be used effectively in a slideshow lead in? Well, just for fun I tossed one in for this less than five minute show (about 43 megabyte zipped executable download so broadband needed). You judge.

Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park scenery and critters...... Soft music...

http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/rmnpreflect.zip

Lin

[LumenLux]

Lin, the link gives me a split-second long download. The dl'd zip then gives a "corrupt" message and no exe file.

[Lin Evans]

Lin, the link gives me a split-second long download. The dl'd zip then gives a "corrupt" message and no exe file.

Yep, something wrong on the net tonight, perhaps my server is acting up. I can't ftp or even reach the site via ftp so will find out and correct it tomorrow hopefully. Sorry....

I just uploaded it from another system under a new link and updated the original message with the new link. It "should" be O.K. now - don't know what was going on....

-----------------------------

O.K., link seems to be good now, I just downloaded it and tested it....

-----------------------------

Lin

[ronwil]

Downloaded OK in just under 3 minutes. A good demonstration but I am still of the opinion that all the new facilities in PTE 5.0 will have to be used with discretion. I appreciate that this is a demo but if this had been a normal sequence one would have expected the water to also ripple with the shot of the wolf (correct me if I am wrong) but I appreciate that this would have been impracticable. Strangely enough I did not find the general use of pan and zoom throughout the demo unacceptable, in fact I thought it a very smooth and tasteful rendition.

I have had an Adobe action for a still reflection on my system for some time, but used it only once and that as a bit of fun. I would like to try this latest action but cannot see how to download.

Thanks Lin

Ron [uK}

[Ken Cox]

Robert

in the last year there was one of the members in the UK that had a show posted on his server that we had trouble getting -- we would have to download it a couple times to get a complete show -- it was almost as tho' we had to "wake up the server"

he had no answer for the cause

I have had it happen at other sites -- not p2e sites - where if i am slow on clicking the ok to save the file ends up a dud

Lin

no problems d/l'ing

slight jerk with the pano's --single picts pan/zoom smooth

ken

[alrobin]

I have had an Adobe action for a still reflection on my system for some time, but used it only once and that as a bit of fun. I would like to try this latest action but cannot see how to download.[uK}

Ron,

See my post #7 HERE.

[alrobin]

Can "Reflections" be used effectively in a slideshow lead in? Well, just for fun I tossed one in for this less than five minute show (about 43 megabyte zipped executable download so broadband needed). You judge.

Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park scenery and critters...... Soft music...

http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/rmnpreflect.zip

Lin

Lin,

This is a stellar show. Beautiful wildlife shots! I didn't find many of the actions unnecessary or objectionable except maybe the one where you were rotating the image - didn't feel it added anything to the overall show.

My rule of thumb on PZR actions is "only apply where they add to the overall message or theme of the show". IMHO, if you can't think of a good reason for including an effect (same goes for a specific transition), it's best not to.

One other rule of thumb of mine is regarding the direction of the zoom or pan. (i.e. how to decide whether to zoom in or out, or pan left or right - or up or down.) IMHO, generally zooms and pans should be used mainly to accentuate motion in the show. My feeling is that pans should be in the direction of the object's motion (except for panoramas, of course), and that zooms should generally be inward to a subject, so that the viewer has already seen the object in it's context, and now the author wants to highlight a particular aspect of the object. If this isn't the case, then perhaps the action shouldn't be used at all. I find that it is much easier to concentrate on and admire an image if it is not moving at all. Zooms out are generally most effective when leaving an object or scene.

One can come up with "rules" but they are always meant to be broken, so these "rules of thumb" are just that - one should always use what the individual situation dictates. These are just my personal views on the subject, and will probably change after watching a few more slideshows using these effects and creating a few more myself.

I thought the reflection added a nice realistic touch - after all, one reason for using an action could be that no one has ever done it that way before. Once it has been included in umpteen dozen shows, however, it could become passé. (unless, of course, it is a "trademark" of one's shows).

[ronwil]

Thanks Al for the link

Ron [uK]

[Lin Evans]

Downloaded OK in just under 3 minutes. A good demonstration but I am still of the opinion that all the new facilities in PTE 5.0 will have to be used with discretion. I appreciate that this is a demo but if this had been a normal sequence one would have expected the water to also ripple with the shot of the wolf (correct me if I am wrong) but I appreciate that this would have been impracticable. Strangely enough I did not find the general use of pan and zoom throughout the demo unacceptable, in fact I thought it a very smooth and tasteful rendition.

I have had an Adobe action for a still reflection on my system for some time, but used it only once and that as a bit of fun. I would like to try this latest action but cannot see how to download.

Thanks Lin

Ron [uK}

Hi Ron,

Thanks much for the feedback. The ripple effect only really makes sense for a lake or relatively still body of water which can be either smooth or have "ripples" along with reflections. In a river or creek such as the coyote is standing in where the water is running, reflections are rare in any substantive way and the "lapping" effect of ripples in still water wouldn't work I'm afraid. The may, perhaps, be another way to simulate the running water. I'm working on that now...

The Reflect effect is done by a program (not in Photoshop, etc.) which uses the original image to create a mirror image at the bottom and then create multiple images each having slightly different distortions to simulate a "ripple" effect in the water which is also simulated by the program.

The program has three output methods. It can create an AVI file which you can adjust the length of via the program, it can create an animated Gif file or it can output sequential jpg's, etc., which can be used in your PTE show. To do the effect in my sample took a total of 211 jpg images which consisted of a repetition of 30 original jpgs. Each of the 211 images has a display time of 66ms which effectively simulates a 15 frame per second "movie". I have run as many as 10,000 of these jpgs using PicturesToExe in a simulation. There is no additional memory overhead after the original 30 which are then copied en mass and duplicate to to 100 then that 100 copied to get to 1,000 and the 1,000 copied to get to 10,000.

For normal displays lasting a few seconds such as the one I used in the demo, a couple hundred set at 66ms works out very well.

You can download the software from AL's link and install it and play with it. I find images which "could" have a lake or pond beneath (not which actually "do" have such) work best. The Moose cow and calf were actually headed down to a pond which was around 20 feet below the actual bottom of this frame so the realism is more believable, I think. So you wouldn't want for example a tree cut in half by the frame at the bottom of your image, but rather an image cropped in such a way so the water and reflection would be a legitimate possibility for the effect.

Best regards,

Lin

Robert

in the last year there was one of the members in the UK that had a show posted on his server that we had trouble getting -- we would have to download it a couple times to get a complete show -- it was almost as tho' we had to "wake up the server"

he had no answer for the cause

I have had it happen at other sites -- not p2e sites - where if i am slow on clicking the ok to save the file ends up a dud

Lin

no problems d/l'ing

slight jerk with the pano's --single picts pan/zoom smooth

ken

Hi Ken,

It's a pretty large file (the pano) so perhaps some resource issue may be responsible for the slight jerkness you experienced. It plays smoothly on all of our systems, but they all have fairly good video cards with lots of RAM.

Best regards,

Lin

Lin,

This is a stellar show. Beautiful wildlife shots! I didn't find many of the actions unnecessary or objectionable except maybe the one where you were rotating the image - didn't feel it added anything to the overall show.

My rule of thumb on PZR actions is "only apply where they add to the overall message or theme of the show". IMHO, if you can't think of a good reason for including an effect (same goes for a specific transition), it's best not to.

One other rule of thumb of mine is regarding the direction of the zoom or pan. (i.e. how to decide whether to zoom in or out, or pan left or right - or up or down.) IMHO, generally zooms and pans should be used mainly to accentuate motion in the show. My feeling is that pans should be in the direction of the object's motion (except for panoramas, of course), and that zooms should generally be inward to a subject, so that the viewer has already seen the object in it's context, and now the author wants to highlight a particular aspect of the object. If this isn't the case, then perhaps the action shouldn't be used at all. I find that it is much easier to concentrate on and admire an image if it is not moving at all. Zooms out are generally most effective when leaving an object or scene.

One can come up with "rules" but they are always meant to be broken, so these "rules of thumb" are just that - one should always use what the individual situation dictates. These are just my personal views on the subject, and will probably change after watching a few more slideshows using these effects and creating a few more myself.

I thought the reflection added a nice realistic touch - after all, one reason for using an action could be that no one has ever done it that way before. Once it has been included in umpteen dozen shows, however, it could become passé. (unless, of course, it is a "trademark" of one's shows).

Hi Al,

Thanks much for the feedback! I'm sure the reflection effect can and "will" be overdone in the weeks to come, much as it was on the web in the Java "Lake" applet when that became available.

One of the ongoing issues with creating slideshows is the attempt to determine how many and what type transitions and effects create the most pleasing aesthetic. Even with refinement, the final product will please some and not others so there really is never a true "right or wrong" but we can all agree that it's very easy to over use effects. Personally I like simple fades for the majority of my transitions but sometimes throw in a "gratuitous" page turn or other - perhaps out of boredom - LOL..

Best regards,

Lin