nickles

Lumenlux: Yes quite often and not just PTE shows. I use only Brand Name DVDs such as TDK, Sony, Maxell and Imation...never Memorex(always had bad experiences with anything made by them). I've found that -R are more reliable, but +RW is the most reliable. I normally always create a backup DVD of my productions...just in case. I've not tried the new Dual Layer and not sure if my DVD players would recognize them. ken

1024x768...that's pretty much been my standard mode of operation, but the worlds changing all around us. I look around my office and a 1024x768 display is a rarity...the more common being a 1280x1024 flat panel. I still do all my editng on a 4:3 CRT as my experience with flat panels has not been very good when trying to adjust color and contrast. My demo was related to for 200% zooming into a 1280 width original image. I thought the degradation was reasonably acceptable. A zoom from 1024 to 1280 width to fit your image to the typical flat panel is only a 25% zoom...I would expect very little deterioration. Your last statement above is giving me concerns. I may just have to put the forum aside for a while..pack up my camera and go off to the wild blue yonders. What good is PTE without the main thing...Photos? Ken

Hello: I maintain some photo galleries on Pbase primarily for friends and relatives and general postings. I was perusing other photographer's works and came across this remarkable gallery. I think it gives all of us aspiring photographer's something to strive for. Take a peek and see if you agree: http://www.pbase.com/gilazouri/china nickles

Hello Robert C.: Have you been off photographing that wonderful Utah scenery again? Yes, I definitely agree. I tried to demonstrate and explain the trade-offs in this thread: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=4492 You may have already took a peak at it. Sincerely, nickles

Hello Al, Thanks for your very good post and files. I will definitely study them this evening....as I'm unfortunately working on non-PTE related things today...just taking a break at the moment. Your grid lines are excellent...I suspect you must be an engineer. As you could probably tell in my last post in the Aspect Ratio thread...I got frustrated trying to sort it out. Hope you don't get a headache studying it. One question...and I'm sure I will have more...are the red fonts you used in your spreadsheet indicative of "something ain't right". I don't know if you have access to a 5:4, i.e., 1280x1024, monitor...but there are lot's of them out in the world now...LCD flat panels. Keep up your good work and scientific approach. I really think this all needs to be sorted through so that we have an idea of what the end user of our shows may expect to see...with varying aspect ratios of monitors. Very sincerely, Ken from Texas

Hello, DaveG has made a nice post describing how he sizes his slideshow image files for various zoom percentages in the following thread: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=4481 For the clearest and sharpest picture Dave’s suggestion works great and will result in the clearest zoomed image. Most monitors today are rarely setup to exceed a vertical resolution over 1024 pixels, although it is possible. Most of the newer LCD flat panels, both desktop and Laptop have a native resolution at or below 1024 pixels, although I do have a laptop that has a native resolution of 1680x1050. The vertical resolution is still pretty close to 1024 pixels. What vary most today are the horizontal resolution and not the vertical. I have played around with Dave’s recommendation with the idea of designing my shows based on a maximum expected vertical resolution of 1024. Using Dave’s recommendations I decided to design a show for a LCD flatpanel that has a resolution of 1280x1024. For this show I desire a zoom of 200%, which to me is an extreme zoom. According to Dave’s recommendations I multiply the screen resolution by 200% or decimal 2.0. The recommended slide image size would therefore be 2560x2048. My digital SLR creates a raw image size of 3072x2048. I cropped two images to get a 2560x2048 size and saved the two images(I refer to later as Large). I then resized both images to 1280x1024 and saved these two images(I refer to later as Small). I then used these 4 images to create a PTE 5 slideshow with a 200% zoom into each of the 4 images. I played the slide show and did 4 screen captures of the 200% zoom for each image. I then created a slideshow with PTE 4.48 of these captured images to demonstrate the zoom degradation by not following Dave’s recommendation. I have posted this slideshow as ZoomDegradation and posted here: http://briefcase.yahoo.com/bc/sknickles@sb...ic+Data&.view=l You may have to hit your browser refresh button several times to access this file. I purposely created the slideshow for moving between slides manually with the left and right cursor keys. The zooms labled Large adhere to Dave’s rules and the zooms labled Small are the zooms into the 1280x1024 images. If you bounce back and fourth between the small a large image you can quickly discern the difference in image quality. My conclusion is that Dave’s technique gives superior image sharpness but….the smaller 1280x1024 results aren’t that “shabby”. There are two advantages to using the smaller image size. The most obvious is that the PTE “.exe” slideshow that is created from the smaller images will be more compact which makes for easier distribution via the internet. The second and maybe more important advantage is that image that must be manipulated by the video card is 4 times smaller. This should be of great benefit for those computers that may have a slower video card with marginal onboard memory…a concern voiced by many about PTE 5. As a general rule of thumb, I would suggest sizing your images for PTE 5 shows to achieve a 1024 pixel vertical size, regardless of the horizonal size or monitor aspect ratio. The show will be as sharp as your original photo for the non-zoomed slides and “not too shabby” for zooms up to 200%. Sharpness will improve the less you zoom. This is the case for general distribution of your slideshows. If you know the show will be viewed only on computers with a high-end video card then Dave’s formula will yield the sharpest results. This is just my thinking and observations. Sincerely, Ken

Hello DaveG: I am presently running on a 1280x1024 monitor also. If I set the Project Options to either 4:3 PC/DVD or 5:4 PC I don't get black bars on the sides, of course, depending on the photos aspect ratio, I do get black bars at the top or bottom when zooming. I'm surprised that you are getting black bars on the sides, as I'm not? The reason I put the white bars in is to mark the 200% zoom quadrants...just to verify the 200% when zooming. I think people might be surprised if they design there show on a 1280x1024 display with the project option set at 5:4 PC and then go to a friends house whom has a 4:3 display to view. There will be a 40 pixel band on each side regardless of the images aspect ratio. If they design the show with the project option set to 4:3 it will appear without the 40 pixel side bands on both the 1280x1024 display and the 4:3, i.e.,1024x768, display. I don't feel at all comfortable with PTE 5's Project Option for screen aspect. It would be better if it fit the maximum image dimension too whatever screen the show is played on. Thus, one could do away with that option. I would really like to see PTE 5 with a "fill the screen" function. A feature that the slideshow viewer could cause to happen with a function key. It would zoom into the center of the slide sufficiently to "fill the entire screen". A similar function is available on most DVD players. I 100% concur with your math in determing image size by multiplying by zoom factor. That's exactly how I was approaching it...I'm very glad you put it in writing. I started this thread primarily to share some cropped slides for people to play around with...that was probably a mistake on my part...as I don't have the answers...just some potential problems. In fact it's given me a bit of a headache studying it. I think I'll just observe this thread for a bit and let it die on it's on accord. Thanks for your very beneficial inputs. Sincerely, ken

Al, Soon as I come up with a conclusion I will post it. I've had a difficult time figuring out the zoom percentage. There is a % of display and a % of image. If I'm designing a show on a Laptop with an 8:5 aspect ratio, what screen aspect do I select under project options? Under Object properties "mode" do I select "original", "fit to screen", or "cover screen". I desire for the show to run on all aspect ratios with maximum use of the screen it is being view on. I'm sure there is a proper decison process to go through...I'm just slow at figuring it out. I thought if a few people download the Pan&Zoom files and played around with the aspects they might assist in my conclusion. I prefer fullscreen images with no black bars top or side. It appears this can be done with "cover screen", but that only works for the aspect ratio entered in the project options. Ken

Darn It Lin, Your getting awful good with the PTE 5. Very nicely done demonstration with lot's of neat concepts. Thanks so much for sharing...... Ken

Bill: I'm looking for an answer to your question. This slideshow is my starting point. So many variables with Photo Size, Aspect Ratios, and Screen Resolutions. Sincerely, Ken

I'm doing some serious thinking on sizing photos, aspect ratios for camera and PC screen, and how to best design shows for being seen with "who knows what?" aspect ratio and screen resolution the end customer has. If I can sort it all out I may generate some general guidelines...as I see it. As you are aware it's normally satisfactory to downsize but not upsize beyond the original pixels. I started an initial thinking thread here: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=4481 Secondly, I really think your nice 3D effect was surely luck. One other thing, hindsight always being better than foresight, it would have really been neat if the slide with the yellow foreground flowers had been shot twice. Once at a narrow depth of field with the flowers in focus and the object rocks out of focus, followed by the large depth of field(as in your show) with the rocks in focus. Would have been difficult to do without a tripod...but would have made a neat transition for concentrating on the rock figures. Sincerely, nickles

Bill: May take up to a half dozen hits on your browser refresh. It normally takes me 3-6 hits to even be able to upload. Sorry...It's a Yahoo DSL problem. ken

Hello Everybody This is just an experiment I wish to share with all that might be interested. I’ve been trying to get a good understanding of Pan & Zoom as related to a photos aspect ratio and the corresponding aspect ratio of the monitor to be used to view the photo in PTE 5. Most cameras shoot photos in two different aspect ratios, i.e., 6x4 and 4x3. There are variations but these are the most common. PC monitors used to be exclusively 4x3 but the world has changed. 4x3 is probably still the most common. The new flat screen LCD monitors are normally 5x4. Wide screen Laptops are typically 8x5. Plasma or LCD HDTV’s are typically 16x9. Thus, the aspect ratios a PTE 5 designer must contend with are: 6x4 4x3 5x4 8x5 16x9 I grabbed a photo from a digital 6mp SLR that has an aspect ratio of 6x4. I then proceeded to crop from this original (3072x2048 pixels) the various aspect ratios listed above. These were all straight crops with no resizing. This resulted in 5 jpgs with pixel sizes as follows: Photo_6x4 = 3072x2048 Photo_4x3 = 2741x2048 Photo_5x4 = 2560x2048 Photo_8x5 = 3072x1920 Photo_16x9 = 3072x1728 I divided each photograph in precise quadrants with a white outline for each quarter. I created a PTE 5 slideshow with the 5 images. The slideshow starts with the 6x4 image at a zoom of 100% with the properties mode set at “fit to screen”. The show then zooms to the upper left quadrant at 200% zoom. The show then pans to the upper right quadrant followed by a pan to the lower right quadrant and then to the botom left quadrant all at 200% zoom. The show then zooms back out at 100%. This is followed by a zoom to the photos center at 200%. This process is then repeated for the remaining 4 photos of varying aspect ratios. I have posted the slideshow PTE files at the following location: http://briefcase.yahoo.com/bc/sknickles@sb...ic+Data&.view=l It’s the file named Pan&Zoom and is approximately 6.5mb in size. You may have to hit the browser refresh several times to access the file. The project option for screen has been set to 4:3 PC. If you download you may desire to change this option and view the effect. The object property for all images was set to “fit to screen”. You might also desire to change this and view the effect. I presently have computer displays of 4x3, 5x4, and 8x5 aspect ratios that I have ran the show on. I’ve not drawn any conclusions yet but it does give me a pretty good feel for how the Pan & Zoom is affected by aspect ratios. Of course most of you most likely understand all of this…I may just be a slow learner. nickles

Hello: Another very creative idea...keep the innovation coming. Thanks for sharing along with your PTE files. It sure helps many of us to understand "how you done it". Sincerely, nickles

Lumenlux: Very definitely a "strange land". First, your photography was very, very nice as I've learned to expect from your shows. I found the amount of motion you used to be very appealing. I had originally anticipated that Igor's pan & zoom would not really be that big a deal...as I tend to like slideshow of "stills". My opinion has changed especially after viewing shows like this as well as your "Spirit in the Sky". The slight motion can give the viewer more of a sense of "being there". You captured a very good almost 3D effect in...I think the 8th slide.... with the big boulder to the right and the distant mountain in the horizon. You did this same thing in a couple of places in Spirit in the Sky..the most notable was where I felt like I was entering into the long stone causeway. I really like that effect. I assume maybe you intended it...or maybe luck? You have done two very nice projects with PTE 5, that are very pleasing to watch...and I really think the motion added very nicely to the shows beyond PTE 4's more static effects. What actual image size to you create this show from? In the large version of Spirit in the Sky, what was the actual image size you used? Thanks, ken

Igor: When I made the demo "PotatoHead" it was created from cutouts of the completed facial image without resizing in my photo editor. These cutouts were stored as .png files. When I made the PTE 5 slideshow all properties of all images were set to "fit to screen". This required very much trial and error with pan & zoom to get the position and scale right. My resulting zoom factors were all over the place and looked like this: Left Eye - 10.0 Nose - 16.5 Mouth - 13.0 Right Hair - 42.0 Left Hair - 45.0 Right Eye - 10.0 Chin - 48.0 Forehead - 17.0 Shirt - 79.5 Left Cheek - 14.5 Right Cheek - 17.0 Should I have set the .png cutout file properties to "Original" instead of fit to screen? I have posted the original PTE files here: http://briefcase.yahoo.com/bc/sknickles@sb...ic+Data&.view=l Sincerely, Ken

Excellent! A very creative and innovative idea and demo. I'll definitely remember this one. Thanks for sharing, Ken

Lumenlux: I'm definitely not and expert in this area but you might try a couple of things...if you haven't already. 1.) Limit your display resolution to no greater than 1024x768. 2.) Disable anti-antialising in the Nvidia driver if it is not already disabled. May do nothing but may be worth a try. nickles

Hello Everybody: For the past several years I have used a Free Program called X-Setup for tweaking W2k and Wxp operating systems. It is especeially useful for finding programs that "Startup" when Windows starts up. It permits you to disable and re-enable this startup software. Often times programs that startup when Windows start can possibally interfere with programs like PTE 5. I don't recommend you download and install unless you've got a pretty good understanding of how Windows operates...because you can easily screw up your system. The software does present CAUTION messages if you try to change something that is critical. There is a PRO version for sale but the free version is available here: http://www.tucows.com/preview/219636 Thought this might be useful for trouble-shooting. But please don't blame me if you change the wrong Windows parameters. Ken

Hello: I am far from being an expert in color profiles or gamuts. I know at one time I attempted to correct all my devices to adhere to Adobe RGB 1998...including monitors, video overlay, scanners, printers and digital camera raw. I never seemed to get satisfactory results...probablly because I didn't know what I was doing. But I feel that I get very consistant results when I adhered to srgb. The worst thing that came of my Adobe RGB experience was that my customers monitors displayed my images totally different than what I was seeing. By sticking with srgb...what my customers see seems to be much the same as I see. This is more important to me as the images are primarily created for them to enjoy more so than for myself. I'm also one who believes that what the image conveys is many, many times more important than the precise technicalities of color, contrast, sharpness, saturation, etc. Just my unprofessional personal thoughts, Sincerely Ken

Al, Well, I envy people that live in a cooler climate this time of year...we've already reached 98 F...but Texas is nice in the winter. The bluebonnets came and went in April. We had several inches of rain in April...so it's reasonablly green. Other than the bluebonnets the wildflowers haven't come into there full bloom yet...but it should be getting real colorful in the next few weeks....I hope. Ken

I use Firefox exclusively and it works for me. Ken

Good Question Howard: The problem with Yahoo is zero help. I have subscribed to SBC Yahoo DSL for about 2 years and I'm sure there are better alternatives. I don't have premium service but pay $28/month (US). This gives me 1GB of storage in My Briefcase and 1GB for e-mails. Yahoo is very unclear on fthe file size limits on Briefcase. I just uploaded a test file size of 14.7mb and it handled it fine. I think the limit is currently 15MB. When I first subscribed it was 5MB. Somewhere in Yahoo's help it indicates 5MB file limit but they never update there help even when things have changed. A year ago it was a hit or miss for most people including myself to access the briefcase. After many, many emails and a few phone calls Yahoo admitted there software had a problem. They must have somewhat fixed it as I think most people can access my files now if they keep hitting the refresh button. I have to to this also, even to upload. I'm sure there are much better alternatives...there are sharper experts than me on the topic of exchanging large files in the forum.....should they choose to respond. Hope this offers you some help? sincerely, ken I just downloaded PotatoHead and timed it at 2mins and 15 seconds. I think the speed might be dependent on how many people are trying to access the file at the same time? Could you suggest a good alternative upload/download method or site? I must admit that I'm a real dummy in this area. I'm glad you enjoyed the show. Sincerely, ken Thanks for everybody's kind comments. I think PTE 5 is going to result in a lot of remarkable slideshows by a lot of creative people. Mine was a bit silly but just shows some of the potentials. sincerely, Ken

Thanks Al, I'm going to have to study this a bit. Headed out the door for Austin, TX. Going to watch my son be annointed as an official member of the Texas Bar...recently graduated and just passed the bar. Guess he'll now have to practice "chasing" ambulances...ha. Hope there are some Texas wildflowers in bloom along the way....my cameras are prepared. Ken

Hello Al, I noticed there was an effect on scaling with "level". But I haven't yet figured out exactly what "level" does. Have you? Sincerely, Ken