Pointers wanted from Pictures2EXE pros

[dpearcePNG]

I've been asked to put together a photo retrospective for the graduating class at our High School. It amounts to a 15 minute show with about 165 photos.

Artistry aside for the moment, what technical advise do the pros have for us relative newbies learning P2E? Pictures formats, file sizes, final showing, etc.

Thanks.

[jevans]

I've been asked to put together a photo retrospective for the graduating class at our High School. It amounts to a 15 minute show with about 165 photos.

Artistry aside for the moment, what technical advise do the pros have for us relative newbies learning P2E? Pictures formats, file sizes, final showing, etc.

Thanks.

Dave,

It is not easy to answer your questions as there are so many ways of preparing at PTE show. I do not count myself as a pro. However I have made many shows in the past and here are some pointers to explain my method.

Firstly if you are going to have any commentary or supporting text explanation, I recommend that you prepare this first. This will help you to determine which photos you need. Then take your photos, sort them into the required order and reject any poor ones. If you are able, edit them in Photoshop to get the best images. Ideally the images should be cropped to 1024 x 768 pixels, but other sizes can be used. I have a 19 inch monitor and use 1280 x 960 pixel images as they fill my 1280 x 1024 monitor better.

Use the "save for web" function in Photoshop to reduce the image size to about 200 - 400 kB. I also recommend that you rename your images so that they have a number which corresponds to their position in the show. This makes assembling the show easier.

If you have a spoken commentary, then record this next. I use Adobe Audition but you can also use "Audacity" which is a free audio editor. I tend to use 7 secs per image in the show, so I space my commentary out using this value. Obviously some images may have a longer commentary than this. I then import the commentary file into PTE and add the images one at a time to match the commentary. Finally I add some background music into my audio editor and then re-import the composite audio file into PTE.

You also need to think of a title slide and a "credits slide to start and finish the show. It is a good idea to finish with a blank black slide and just fade the final credits slide into this blank.

I am sure you will get many other suggestions as other forum members will have many other ideas. However I hope these comments will get you started. Best of luck. You will get hooked on this if you are not careful.

Best regards

Jeff