davedare

Peter, thanks for your input, much appreciated. I am glad that you liked the individual images, but I understand what you said about the flow. The original idea was to bore entertain my family and friends with my pics of the day trip so it was basically a hotch-potch of images of my impression of the city (bicycle handlebars and crowd scenes included!). I will pin a copy of your initial paragraph to the wall as a reference until it sinks in. I understand what you said about changing landscape to portrait using the soft focus and I did use it on an earlier show I tried and I agree that it works very well. I did not use it on this show because I wanted the portrait format images to change first one side, then the other but keeping it within the same window size as the landscape images, i.e. I was trying to be clever. I also interspersed them between the landscape images so that they were not all clumped at one end or the other. I have heard others say similar to what you said, so I will keep an eye on my verticals, but I won't promise that I will not use the same technique again in the future! I kind of half understand what you said about exiting from the vertical format, I shall spend the Christmas working the rest out . No, actually I think I recall seeing some shows where this has been used, I will study them and apply where appropriate. On the subject of transitions I thought that the pace of the slides fitted with the 'Dreaming Spires' view we have of Oxford, kind of slow and peaceful, not changing at a very fast pace throughout the centuries (although I suspect that it is probably just as crime and drug ridden as anywhere else). Thanks for the comment about the bevel edges. I wanted to give the impression of an almost cushion-like effect so that they seemed to be raised in the middle and then rounded off at the edges. I used a bevel function in Photoshop Elements, first on the frame, then on the individual images exporting each layer plus the frame as a JPG via a script I wrote (it would have been very labourious to do it by hand one at a time). Dave

Hi Barry, Great show, like others I thought the quick-fire changes were pretty good, I would never have thought of that (but I probably will in the future!). And so much blue sky too, is that why you moved to Australia so that you would not have to keep changing the British grey sky backgrounds in Photoshop for something more, um, colourful? Dave

Great photos Paul, it is a very photogenic area, it makes me want to go back up there again. Dave.

Thanks for the comment Ralph, I wish we had more days like that this year too, maybe next year ... Thanks for the comment about the bikes too, it was one of my favourites of the day. Bikes are a definitive part of Oxford, and focusing on just the one set of handlebars with the rest disappearing into infinity seemed to sum up the masses you see everywhere. Funny you should also mention stacking as I have done a lot of that with extreme close ups of insects with 40 or 50 images in each (you can see some in the Gallery section of my web site). It takes many images to make one composite image, but I have not got enough of those one's to make a slide show yet! Dave.

A little Christmas present to remind us of warmer times, at least here in Britain (what the weather is like in Australia I envy to think). It is a slideshow about a warm spring day I spent in Oxford earlier this year (in fact it was that summer day we had at the end of March, it was all down hill after that). Initially I created the show to be seen on my TV at home, but as I shoot with a dslr with an aspect ratio of 3:2, and I cropped the images in camera, I put it inside a 16:9 frame with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 which I thought seemed to work quite well. The slides were created in Photoshop Elements 6 (if it works why replace it) with images that were all taken on my very out of date Pentax K-m (K2000 in America) with Pentax SMC 50mm and 135mm manual prime lenses that are about thirty years old but still give really good quality (shame the same can't be said for the photographer ). The show can be found on my web site in PC and MAC formats Constructive criticism welcome. Dave

If it is of any help my machine is of a similar spec., so I tried a quick project with three slides and a mask. A 1920 x 1080 HQ MP4 file runs OK on my 1280 x 1024 monitor, although it is a bit jerky in places. Dave

Thanks Igor, that seems to have done the trick. I tried it out on a couple of projects that have masks in them and neither of them showed any problems. Dave

It looks like I may have to go back to V7.0 if I need anything that V7.5 cannot handle until I can afford a new machine. It is not the end of the world (offically I think that occurs on 21 December according to the Mayan's). Dave.

Latest update. I have had a look for the latest graphics driver from Intel and mine are up to date (18-6-2008). So if that is the problem there is nothing I can do about it. Dave

Yes, they are the same symptoms that I am getting. I also had a project created in an older version but in V7.5 slides are visible right up until the first one with a mask. One possibility that has been suggested is to check for an updated video driver. I am going to have a look this afternoon and see if I can find one. Dave

Hi Artem, The machine is an Advent QRC430 of about 5 years old. The CPU is an Intel Celeron M 430 at 1.73GHz with 2GB ram and the display adaptor is a Mobile Intel 945 chipset family. I have tried it on a second, older, machine running XP with the same effect. Changing screen sizes does not cure the problem. My standard sizes are 1280 x 800 for the laptop, and 1280 x 1024 for my monitor which I use as an extended screen. I will have look for updated drivers. Dave

Thanks for your help, but it is the addition of the mask container that causes the problem, and not the mask itself as it makes no difference whether I add the mask from PTE or Photoshop. As soon as I add the container the editor screen turns grey. Dave

Hi Xaver, Attached is a zip file or my project folder as you suggested. If you look at the exe file you will see that the mask has done what it is supposed to, but in the edit screen everything turns a blank grey as soon as I add the mask container. So as far as I can see the project file is working properly, the fault would seem to be in the editor. For additional information I have just installed version 7.0 and 7.5.1 on another machine running Windows XP, and I can confirm that V7.0 works OK, but 7.5.1 does not. Dave Masks.zip

Hi, This is my first posting in this forum so I should start by saying that I like using PicturesToExe, and the new interface of version 7.5 seems to be a lot more intuitive than previous version, but ... I have been using PicturesToExe since version 6.5 and have successfully added masks in the past, but since I upgraded to version 7.5.0 (and v7.5.1) masks no longer work. Adding a mask either as a template or from an image file simply turns the editing area grey although the bounding box is visible and adjustable. All objects are listed, but no longer visible apart from their bounding boxes whether they are within the mask container or not. I am running Windows Vista home premium with service pack 2 on my laptop. A second minor problem I have also noticed is that the thumbnail images in the slide view are not always visible if I change projects within a session. Closing and opening P2E cures this problem. These two problems may or may not be related as no-one else seems to have mentioned them so I thought I would mention them both here. Dave