advice for art photo show

[kgoreilly]

I am looking for advice on some things.

I have an art project that involves 10 PicturesToExe shows with music. The original photos are 3072 * 2040 raw files. I created tiff files from these using the sRGB color space. I then created BMPs from the tiffs with a 'widescreen' size 1920 * 1080 where the 1080 was the resized height of the photo and the 1920 was the photo width plus some black margins. Naturally, when I play this on my computer screen (1024 * 768) there are black margins top and bottom as well. The show will be projected on a screen from a computer, and the 10 shows will run in sequence with no gaps.

My thinking behind this approach was that some projectors have 2 million pixel resolution (hence 1920 * 1080) and I wanted control over the aspect ratio and also I did want a fairly large black border to frame the photos.

The things I'm not sure about are the following;

1. I really would like to create a show that is simply the best possible quality, and also one that is future proof. In other words, I would really like to use the full six million pixel file because in the future there may be projectors that can cope with that resolution. If I put a six million pixel slide in the show, how exactly does the program deal with that?

2. I'm not sure that BMP is the best looking image format. My gut feeling is that JPEGS actually look better (punchier maybe?) I assume that the reason I read people saying that JPEG or PNG is preferred is simply because of file size. Is there more to it than that?

3. I've read a bit about 'invisible menus' but I'm worried that if played on another computer with poor specs it might start to 'fall apart' and show glimpses of the desktop between shows. By the way I have no object animations in any of the shows.

4. Are there other issues I should be thinking about if quality is my only goal like anti-aliasing?

I suppose my basic issue here is that I've read the user manual and searched the site, but I cant find detailed discussions relating to image format (especially from a quality viewpoint) and I don't really understand how to get the best projected resolution.

I know I've created these ten shows, but I'm actually a first time user of the software.

It would be great if I could lean on your experience here.

Kevin

[Lin Evans]

I am looking for advice on some things.

I have an art project that involves 10 PicturesToExe shows with music. The original photos are 3072 * 2040 raw files. I created tiff files from these using the sRGB color space. I then created BMPs from the tiffs with a 'widescreen' size 1920 * 1080 where the 1080 was the resized height of the photo and the 1920 was the photo width plus some black margins. Naturally, when I play this on my computer screen (1024 * 768) there are black margins top and bottom as well. The show will be projected on a screen from a computer, and the 10 shows will run in sequence with no gaps.

My thinking behind this approach was that some projectors have 2 million pixel resolution (hence 1920 * 1080) and I wanted control over the aspect ratio and also I did want a fairly large black border to frame the photos.

The things I'm not sure about are the following;

1. I really would like to create a show that is simply the best possible quality, and also one that is future proof. In other words, I would really like to use the full six million pixel file because in the future there may be projectors that can cope with that resolution. If I put a six million pixel slide in the show, how exactly does the program deal with that?

Hi Kevin,

The program can deal perfectly with any size file - your hardware is a totally different issue. Since PTE uses hardware rendering, the ability of your video card GPU (graphical processing unit) and your associated computing power are highly important in the quality of the results.

Generally speaking, using files this large may be a problem especially if you have pans and zooms. Though it's possible to make even nine megapixel slides run smoothly it takes a tremendous amount of computing resource to do. Depending on how you intend to deliver this slideshow trying to use the full six megapixel file may be overkill. The only way to really know is to experiment.

2. I'm not sure that BMP is the best looking image format. My gut feeling is that JPEGS actually look better (punchier maybe?) I assume that the reason I read people saying that JPEG or PNG is preferred is simply because of file size. Is there more to it than that?

There is really no essential difference between the bmp and jpg as far as image quality is concerned, but personally I would use jpg because of the savings in storage space. JPG's expand in memory to their full size but you can put more of them on limited media size and there really is no "penalty" for using high quality jpg with minimal compression. From experience, a level 8 compression in Photoshop is virtually indistinguishable from a level 12 compression so no real need for the additional overhead.

3. I've read a bit about 'invisible menus' but I'm worried that if played on another computer with poor specs it might start to 'fall apart' and show glimpses of the desktop between shows. By the way I have no object animations in any of the shows.

Yes, that's a valid concern as well as having huge files of six megapixels. Most equipment won't support this overhead and play smoothly. If you have no need for animation in these shows, I would suggest using PTE 4.48 to do them. There are some advantages in terms of allocation of resources which might play to your advantage as well as differences in file handling. Having animation has tremendous effects on resources viz stills with transitions so some concessions must be made in programming. Remember when animating there are up to sixty or more actual frames per second being processed. With huge file sizes this definitely strains the resources. Without animations there is much less work being performed and much more time to load files between screens. Since it's very easy to save your work it's not that difficult to create a show in both formats and later substitute identical file but of higher resolution. Use the zip feature in 5.0 to facilitate this.

4. Are there other issues I should be thinking about if quality is my only goal like anti-aliasing?

Just use the default anti-aliasing and you should be fine. The output of PTE is extremely good - the best in fact from any executable presentation slideshow because it uses full hardware rendering for animation in version 5 and uses original images in version 4.48.

I suppose my basic issue here is that I've read the user manual and searched the site, but I cant find detailed discussions relating to image format (especially from a quality viewpoint) and I don't really understand how to get the best projected resolution.

The best projected resolution is usually one which matches the native resolution of the projector. It's so easy to downsample in batch mode using a product like IrfanView that my suggestion would be to keep the originals in full resolution and quickly resample for different shows. As long as you preserve the identical file names and put them in folders the content of which can be quickly zipped up and moved you should have no difficulty in virtually instantly being able to create new executable shows appropriate to the environment.

I know I've created these ten shows, but I'm actually a first time user of the software.

It would be great if I could lean on your experience here.

Kevin

Hope this might help get you on the right track,

Lin

[kgoreilly]

Hi Lin,

Thanks for such a comprehensive reply. I understand PTE a lot better now. I have a few questions about what you say.

Since PTE uses hardware rendering, the ability of your video card GPU (graphical processing unit) and your associated computing power are highly important in the quality of the results.

My monitor display properties indicate the highest resolution possible to be 1920*1440. My video adaptor is NVIDIA Quadro 2 MXR/EX. Does this mean that if I'm determined to get the best quality possible, I should use photos to that level of resolution, and that I should set the screen resolution to that level as well? I realise this has RAM implications, and that it only applies to viewing on my computer.

JPG's expand in memory to their full size

I don't understand what this means.

The output of PTE is extremely good - the best in fact from any executable presentation slideshow because it uses full hardware rendering for animation in version 5 and uses original images in version 4.48.

Are you saying that if a project has no animations (mine has none) that both version 4.48 and version 5.0 give the same image quality, but a show created in version 4.48 makes less demands on my computer's resources when playing?

The best projected resolution is usually one which matches the native resolution of the projector.

Does this mean that the best eventual setup is to have the same resolution for the image, the monitor display, and the projector?

Do projectors simply project the screen resolution up to resolution capacity of the projector?

Am I correct in thinking that most projectors only have 1 million pixel resolution, although some have 2 million?

I hope I'm not being a pest with these questions.

Kevin

[Lin Evans]

Hi Lin,

Thanks for such a comprehensive reply. I understand PTE a lot better now. I have a few questions about what you say.

snip

My monitor display properties indicate the highest resolution possible to be 1920*1440. My video adaptor is NVIDIA Quadro 2 MXR/EX. Does this mean that if I'm determined to get the best quality possible, I should use photos to that level of resolution, and that I should set the screen resolution to that level as well? I realise this has RAM implications, and that it only applies to viewing on my computer.

The only way to be certain is to actually try. In general, the only reason for your files to exceed the native resolution of 1920x1440 would be if your were zooming in to a very tight crop. The rule of thumb is that you don't want to exceed the 1:1 resolution of a file on zoom in by very much or your will loose quality. If you had a scene where you wanted to show an extreme closeup of a face or portion of an image, then for that image only you may want to use the full capture resolution. Othewise there is no advantage in having a greater pixel count on your files than can be displayed by the top limits of you display device. In your case 1920x1440.

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JPG's expand in memory to their full size

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I don't understand what this means.

What this means is that a jpg is a compressed file. The amount of storage in megabytes, etc., it takes to

store a six megapixel jpg file is very much less than what it takes to store the same file in an uncompressed format such as tiff. But when a compressed jpg is loaded into RAM, it expands to the full size just as if it were a tiff file. The file for display purposes is temporarily decompressed in memory then when the file is copied or moved back to storage it has its original compressed file size.

snip...

Are you saying that if a project has no animations (mine has none) that both version 4.48 and version 5.0 give the same image quality, but a show created in version 4.48 makes less demands on my computer's resources when playing?

Yes, in general that's correct. The image quality is the same in either 4.48 or 5.0 but some of the features of 5.0 require more resources because things are done differently in anticipation of animation. So 4.48 will actually do some things better. One example is quickly diplaying sequential images at speeds of about 20 ms. In 5.0 there will be frames dropped at that speed which doesn't happen in 4.48. This probably is uninportant to your situation but if your were simulating a movie by breaking it down into individual frames then playing them back at 30 frames per second, it would work more efficiently in 4.48 than in 5.0.

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The best projected resolution is usually one which matches the native resolution of the projector.

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Does this mean that the best eventual setup is to have the same resolution for the image, the monitor display, and the projector?

Not exactly. What it means is that for your projected slideshow, the most efficient way is to have the images already at the projector's native display size. If the projector you are using is 1024x768 then having your images already sized to this display dimention would be advantageous. Of course, again if you are doing deep zooms, the images which you use for the zoom should have greater file dimensions.

Do projectors simply project the screen resolution up to resolution capacity of the projector?

Yes. Projectors will take whatever you "feed" them and convert it "down" to their own native display size depending on how they are configured. "Best" quality is usually obtained by doing the resample in Photoshop or other software with superior interpolation algorithms and matching the natve display size of the projector.

Am I correct in thinking that most projectors only have 1 million pixel resolution, although some have 2 million?

Though there may projectors with true 2 megapixel display, I'm not aware of them. There are some using compressed 1920x1080 but their native is 1280x1024 or so. I'm not up on the latest in LCD projectors but in my experience brightness is much more important for projection quality than resolution numbers. A good 1024x768 projector with excellent brightness usually works quite well.

I hope I'm not being a pest with these questions.

Not at all...

Kevin

[kgoreilly]

Thanks Lin that was great.

[LumenLux]

Lin, I just want to thank you too. When this type of intelligent discussion takes place, it helps us all. Even when we think we have known most (some?) of it before. Thanks Kevin for asking questions that extract Lin's knowledge for us all to utilize.

I've had the good fortune of taking so many pictures lately, I have not been doing much in the Forum. So it is nice to be able to check in and always find something useful and maybe even be able to contribute as well.

[Almark]

Lin,

I came to this forum with the same questions in mind. May I say I find your detailed reply most impressive - well done. It has answered all my concerns. BTW for large res projectors doa search for 'HD Ready projectors'.