The Allure of Southwest Art

[Lin Evans]

This one was fun to make. It may be a bit heavy on graphic cards and probably will not run smoothly unless you have a more powerful graphics system because of the size of the photos. Much of the art is very tiny and to see the detail I needed high quality jpgs of pretty large pixel dimensions. Throw in a couple Snow Globe animations and it pushes the envelope a bit.

About 36 meg zipped executable:

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

Best regards,

Lin

[ronwil]

Fun to make and a joy to watch. The images were stunning, with outstanding clarity even when zooming in. The sequence gave me lots of assurance in the quality of my own equipment to be able to cope with PTE 5.0. Thanks Lin and by the way it took under two minutes to download. High regards.

Ron [uK]

[Ken Cox]

Lin quite a show

would suggest you add some links to thread to clay polymer art for new and old members of the forum so they can get some background of the craft

and

was the spelling correct in the credits for

Snta Clara ?

2nd entry is

Santa Clara

ken

[Lin Evans]

Hi Ron,

Thanks very much and I'm glad that the sequences played properly. It's difficult to know exactly what to expect when using high resolution photographs and how they will perform on various systems. I keep the file size down as much as possible without too much compromise in appearance and on my own different systems it plays well but I always worry about how it will respond on the limited graphics environments. Of course in a couple years it will be mostly academic since Vista will eventually replace the majority of today's operating systems and it does have much more stringent requirements for video processing power. Still, in many parts of the world there are many who will use older systems.

It's like walking a tightrope at times when making a decision about what to include or not. Fortunately, most of our clients (art galleries) both in the U.S. and abroad have upgraded equipment and our serious professional shows are done for them using photographs of their own inventory. I have no choice in these cases but to use our highest resolution photos, but deciding where to draw the line for the general population is always troublesome. It's mostly trial and error and the nice thing about the forum is the feedback from those not only with the most modern and powerful graphics environments but also from those with less than optimal equipment.

Best regards,

Lin

Fun to make and a joy to watch. The images were stunning, with outstanding clarity even when zooming in. The sequence gave me lots of assurance in the quality of my own equipment to be able to cope with PTE 5.0. Thanks Lin and by the way it took under two minutes to download. High regards.

Ron [uK]

[Lin Evans]

Hi Ken,

Thanks much for the feedback and good catch on the typo. I use a wireless keyboard which is prone to dropping characters. When I type the text into the PNG transparency it's difficult to see the characters and this isn't the first time I've missed one - LOL. I've corrected it and reposted to the link.

Great suggestion on the Jon Anderson art - I'll get some links and edit the original post. It's difficult for many to realize what goes into making these tiny art pieces until they have some background. Even if the designs were painted they would be incredible but to know that there is absolutely no paint on any of them and that the intricate and tiny designs were constructed entirely of polymer clay staggers the imagination when one realizes that they must be examined under extreme magnification to even "see" the detail!

Best regards,

Lin

Lin quite a show

would suggest you add some links to thread to clay polymer art for new and old members of the forum so they can get some background of the craft

and

was the spelling correct in the credits for

Snta Clara ?

2nd entry is

Santa Clara

ken

[JPD]

This time I succeed to start your slideshow but it can't go more the the slide after the shoes.

to use our highest resolution photos

I don't know which screen have your customers, but the largest size I know is 2520 x 2048 (QSXGA), so you won't have a better quality to use a highter definition on your photo in a slideshow, the resizing will be better with Photoshop which can take the time it need for it than with PTE which have a good algorithm but can't take all the time as Photoshop do. So you will have a better quality with a 2520 x 2048 (at zoom 100%) than with a larger picture and it will be smoother.

For those who aren't professionnal, 1600 x 1200 is really enough (for 4/3 screen) and most of people in europe have today 1280 or 1024 screen définition.

Those who have a projector are generally in 1024, we just begin to see 1400 x 1050 projector.

For my V5 slideshows I generally use 1280 and begin a try with 1400 (only Versailles is 1920 x 1080 and run fine on my PC).

Which size are your pictures ?

[Lin Evans]

Hi Jean-Pierre,

A number of our clients use 3840x2400 resolution monitors (9.2 megapixel IBM and Viewsonic) and we downsample our original captue resolutions to not exceed that for their slideshows. None of the images in my slideshow are zoomed beyond the original capture at 100% even on the extreme closeups.

Our original captures are made with various digital instruments which range from over 22 megapixels down to 14 megapixels so all are downsampled using a combination of different interpolation algorithms including Genuine Fractals, Qimage, and sometimes Photoshop etc., with Pyramid, Lanczos, and some other custom rips. Prints for these are variously from A0 to A3 sizes.

I suspected that this might not run on the compromised graphics envitonments. One of the closeup images may be causing the problem because I left it at the original 5120x3840 capture size.

Best regards,

Lin

This time I succeed to start your slideshow but it can't go more the the slide after the shoes.

I don't know which screen have your customers, but the largest size I know is 2520 x 2048 (QSXGA), so you won't have a better quality to use a highter definition on your photo in a slideshow, the resizing will be better with Photoshop which can take the time it need for it than with PTE which have a good algorithm but can't take all the time as Photoshop do. So you will have a better quality with a 2520 x 2048 (at zoom 100%) than with a larger picture and it will be smoother.

For those who aren't professionnal, 1600 x 1200 is really enough (for 4/3 screen) and most of people in europe have today 1280 or 1024 screen définition.

Those who have a projector are generally in 1024, we just begin to see 1400 x 1050 projector.

For my V5 slideshows I generally use 1280 and begin a try with 1400 (only Versailles is 1920 x 1080 and run fine on my PC).

Which size are your pictures ?

[Lin Evans]

Just a couple links for those interested in Fiore Fimo Polymer Clay art. Jon Anserson is perhaps the world's most celebrated artist working in this venue.

Jon came from the SW United States (Arizona) and now lives and creates his work in Bali. His techniques have been developed over the years and he does things which are absolutely amazing with this medi.

These are a couple links to more information:

http://www.wynbrier.com/Catagories/John_An...derson_FIMO.htm

http://www.artforwildlife.com/artists/Anderson/JonA.html

Lin

[Edmo0]

Edmo0 banned

[bjc]

Lin,

I have just downloaded and watched “The Allure of Southwest Art”. I congratulate you, it really is a superb presentation. The quality of your photography and lighting (and PTE skills), combined with the intricacies of the (various) artist’s work and your choice of background music, have resulted in an exemplary ‘slideshow’.

Viewed on my (8 yr old) CTR monitor, at 1024x768, I was surprised by how little moiré patterning appeared on-screen, considering the subject matter and the sharpness of your images. I have certainly experienced a higher degree of ‘active’ moiré disturbance when zooming images in some of my experimental slideshows. Have you done anything specific to (successfully) reduce the appearance of this effect ?

As for the performance of PTE v.5 ~ I’m sure we all agree ~ the new features that Igor and his team have provided us with are truly amazing and of the highest quality. However, when watching your show, what (for me) distracts most from the overall ‘reality’ (enjoyment) of the visual experience, are the abrupt stops, starts, and changes of direction relating to the Pan and Zoom movements. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I really do feel this needs to be addressed. With ‘acceleration-from-zero’ and ‘deceleration-to-zero’ added to these animation functions a far more realistic and visually acceptable effect would be achieved. I can only hope that is can/will be added to a future release.

Congratulations once again on an excellent presentation.

bjc

[ksf]

Hi Lin,

Some beautiful artwork and some beautiful photgraphs. You have captured superb detail in the close-up shots and made effective use of the panning and zooming abilities of v5. Personally though, I would have preferred it without the snow-globe effects which felt out of place.