mhwarner

I don't have an HDMI output on my computer, so I cannot do a comparison.

I would agree with this statement. I have a Dell Inspiron 6400. If I run the laptop by itself and use only its built-in monitor, the maximum resolution is something like 1680x1050. If I plug the laptop into my Samsung SyncMaster 245bw monitor via the standard 15-pin vga monitor output, I am then running on the Samsung at 1920 x 1200. I would expect, based on this article (http://blog.shutterbug.com/davidbrooks/lcd_hd_tv_for_slideshows/), to be able to plug my laptop into my new 42" Samsung HD TV and see my shows at full resolution. Unfortunately, the new HD TV is packed away and waiting for final completion of my new house, so I can't try it. FWIW, the spec on my laptop monitor are "Liquid Crystal Display 15.4WSXGA+". I assume if you are only running a laptop with standard VGA or SGA resolution, you may not be able to achieve the full HD 1080i resolution. Following is a list of monitor resolution specs I found. VGA 640 x 480 SVGA 800 x 600 XGA 1024 x 768 SXGA 1280 x 1024 & 1400 x 1050 UXGA 1600 x 1200 WXGA - 1280 X 800 SXGA - 1280 X 1024 WSXGA+ - 1680 X 1050 (this is what I have) WUXGA - 1920 X 1200 QSXGA - 2560 X 2048 Another solution you might want to try which won't require the purchase of a new laptop is this: http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=681 You can purchase one for about $99 at Amazon and other places and with the cost of an HDMI cable, use any USB flash drive or portable backup drive to display slideshows which you create from PTE as "HD Video for PC and MAC" (this process creates an MPEG4 file). (Note: This device can also use standard "RCA" input cables, so you can also use it with an older TV that doesn't have an HDMI input). That saves you the step of burning to a disc and doesn't require a blueray player. This nice thing about this device is that it will also easily display standard jpg files and play music so you can create a very quick slideshow presentation (without all the nice bells and whistles provided by PTE, of course) just to view your daily shots or show some photos that you haven't had time to put into a proper slideshow. The WDTV device is very small and since I happen to have about 6 or 7 WD passport drives, it's a perfect solution for me until I get my new HDTV set up. I hope this all makes sense.

Lin, I hope what you've described is in the realm of "simple management of audio tracks" within PTE. While I agree that stopping there might not satisfy the most technical among us, it would make me happy and probably a good percentage of those creating all but the most sophisticated presentations.

Maureen: I very much enjoyed the show. The photography was just stunning. As for the music, to be honest, I was so engrossed in the pictures that I hardly noticed it (except to notice that it didn't seem inappropriate). The only thing I would have loved is a very brief explanation or maybe a map to pinpoint the general area in which the photos were taken (so I could put it on my list of places I'd love to see one day). If you could just give us some details here, that would be great. Thanks for sharing this show!

Hi Dom, My laptop resolution is 1680 x 1050. In this latest show, there is definitely nothing wrong with the music. But I still see the jerkiness, which is most apparent again in the transitions to and from black. The animations themselves are pretty smooth. I did go back and rerun the 5.7b2 version of the show and there really isn't much difference between it and the latest. It is mostly the transition that is jerky and the fade from light slides to black and then back again makes it particularly noticeable. Anyway, it's still a nice slideshow.

I have a lot of flickering on both of the new versions. It's almost the same as those old-time movies and is especially noticeable in the transitions to/from the black. As someone else remarked, it also seems as if the music is stuttering as well, although that may actually be the music itself. I have a Dell Inspiron I6400 with Intel Core 2 CPU T5500 @1.66 GHz with 2 GB of RAM and an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 graphics card. Not top of the line, of course, but most other shows run pretty smoothly on it. For now, just using the laptop screen itself as I don't have access to my external monitor at the moment. Also running XP SP2.

I live about 2 hours from the Canyon, so I might be interested as well if this ever materializes. When I did it last November, I actually booked a tour because I didn't want to go alone. The tour company was located in Flagstaff and supplied a medically trained guide, all the meals, the backpacks, sleeping bags, tents and took care of the reservations. The guide even prepared all our meals for us! They also handled all the reservations and permits. I just had to show up. It was about $900 and although they have several designated hikes, they will also do customized trips for groups.

Hi Dave, Enjoyed your slideshow. I made almost the same trip last November, but I did it in 4 days with a 45-pound pack. We went down the South Kaibab, spent two nights at Bright Angel with a day hike up the Clear Creek Trail, then hiked up to Indian Gardens (with a sunset hike to Plateau Point) and then out on the last day. I could certainly appreciate the "sore feet" photos (and even the black-and-blue toenails in the one). Going down was the hardest part, I think. I really appreciated the little minnie bottles shots as well. We just went to the Phantom Ranch Canteen to do our imbibing. Fortunately, we had much cooler weather for our trip. In fact, it went down to 17 at the top on the night we were at Indian Gardens and we all slept with every piece of clothing we had with us. In any case, be proud of your accomplishment. I know what it took to do the trip and I applaud you all. I know it's not that big a deal to young folks, but at our age, it does take some effort. Thanks for sharing the journey. One of these days I will get around to putting my photos of the hike into a show.

I love the anti-aliasing on rectangles! Can't wait for the beta!

Ed, Glad you like the software. You may also be interested in the forum: DAPainter forum. One person posted some very cool results which had been obtained by taking the layered file into Painter and into PS to add some finishing touches. There are also a couple of interesting threads on the AOP templates and how to create your own. I have been experimenting some and am looking forward to having a bit more time to get into it. These threads over at DPReview have some neat examples to give you some inspiration as well: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat...thread=31991231 http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat...thread=31960463 http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat...thread=31977950

Thanks Lin. I actually tested the software a while back and ended up purchasing the stripped down "Redynamics" version, which I use often to create HDR images from single exposures. It does a really good job on many of my southwestern "rock" photos (Monument Valley, petrogyphs, etc.).

Patrick, Magical is the word I would use to describe your show. The colors were exquisitely captured and the transitions were well-done. I must admit, though, that I don't recall ever having seen a circus before where there were llamas and ostriches. How interesting. Anyway, a most enjoyable show. Thank you for letting us see it.

Hi John, What a beautiful area. You are so fortunate to be able to "climb some hills" in this place! Nice choice of photos and the music was a good match. I have two comments on the pictures. First, you apparently had some dust spots on the camera's sensor (or on your lens) that could use a bit of touching up (or cloning out). It is most evident in the blue sky areas. My second suggestion would be to perhaps do a bit of post processing work on a couple of the dark photos to pull out the shadow detail. The second image of the castle actually has a good bit of detail that I was able to pull out on a quick test. The only other observation I had -- totally unrelated to anything your show or photos -- was that the highway bridge to the island was seemed so out of place in all that lovely scenery. I guess that's progress, though. Thanks for sharing your photos!

Nice presentation and the photos are all the more impressive knowing that your mobility was restricted. My only comments are that the transition I would have chosen is "Curling of Page (Horizontal/Vertical)" rolling up from right, which would to me be more like flipping through an album. The direction you have chosen seems backwards to me. The other thing I might have done is to check the "color of backside" box and select a gray or white so that the previous picture doesn't show through as the transition is happening. Again, to me more like looking through an actual album. Just my 2 cents. Thanks for sharing!

This may not be the correct place for this posting so the moderators can feel free to move it to the "Slideshow" forum if they feel that is a better place. I just wanted to share a link for some really amazing software I have been playing with for the last month or so. It's called Dynamic Auto-Painter and can be found here: Dynamic Auto Painter website. I know there have been tutorials and links to various Photoshop actions to give photos a more painterly look for intros to slideshows and even to entire slideshows, but this software can be a one-click solution to some pretty interesting and amazing "painted" results. It has been evolving over the last month and there is a forum where the author (like our wonderful Igor) participates frequently to hear ideas and requests which are promptly incorporated into the software. The software is not really dependent on the original photo resolution so it can be a great solution for older 2-3 mp digital photos (but it also does a great job on 10 mp photos as well). There are a number of included templates and the website contains details on how to create your own if you are wanting a special or unique look. There is a free trial download that is only limited in that it puts a banner across the bottom of the photo, so you can easily see the results which can be achieved. In my opinion, the results are far superior to what can be achieved by the autopainting feature in Corel Painter or Painter Essentials and the price is significantly lower. There is a pdf file included in the download. Be sure to read it first to understand some of the controls which are available. The only downside to the software is that is extremely habit forming. I have spent many hours playing with it when I should have been doing other things. Here are a couple of "paintings" I created with it: This is apparently the last week for the low introductory offer, so if you are interested, you should probably get it now at $35 US before the price goes up. Lifetime updates are free. I have no association with the software, but I just wanted to return the favor of a heads up on it to my friends here who have over the years shared links to other software which can be useful in creating PTE slideshows.

Thanks! Will give it a try. And it's really great to have you back. We have missed you here in the forum!

Hi John, Not sure if this article will be helpful (http://www.windowssecrets.com/2008/08/14/03-Youll-get-a-new-Windows-Update-like-it-or-not) but if not, perhaps you might find other useful information on the windowssecrets site. It is the home base for a bi-weekly newsletter to which I subscribe and they provide very good expert information about many technical pc-related topics, including automatic updates and patches for both XP and Vista. The search engine will find you some other articles on "automatic updates".

And what incredible photos they are! You (and Catherine) certainly have an eye for composition. I'm not sure which I really liked best, but I was particularly caught by the one shot of various sized elephants. The light and the lines were wonderful. I also especially liked some of the shots with the trees and the dunes. The music was appropriate and the show did not suffer in the least from the lack of any special effects. Thank you for sharing these pictures with us! I'm sure it was a trip you will remember for a lifetime.

Like Barry and everyone else here, I too have struggled with the slideshow size issue. Since all of the shows I currently make for sale are delivered on DVD (presumably for replay on set-top DVD players) and I have no way of knowing what size or resolution TVs will be used, I started with 1024x786 and have recently moved to 1280 x 1024. Perhaps after the forced over-the-air conversion to HD in the US in June, I will think about a different ratio and size. Since I haven't yet purchased a HD TV (it's at the top of my shopping list right now), when I have done shows for display here at home, I use my 19" monitor and thus size my shows for as close to full-screen as possible on my monitor (1920 x 1200). For a lot of those shows, I don't even bother to resize since they won't be downloaded and size/bandwidth isn't an issue. However, regarding the idea of redoing old shows, as the size/resolution/quality of the monitors or TVs improve (as well as that of the projectors many of you use in AV clubs), the options available in PTE are constantly improving as well, and the options and technology of our image editing programs usually get more sophisticated with each iteration. In addition, presumably our own competency improves as we become more skilled at working with our images. More than likely, if I were to redo an old slideshow, I would probably re-edit some of the images in Photoshop, perhaps apply different plugin filters, use more zooms, pans and masks, etc. So would I want to just take an old existing slideshow and upsize the images. Probably not. As long as I have access to my original digital files, I would probably look at the old show, perhaps make note of the images I used, and then redo it with the most up-to-date technology. Just a few thoughts.

Thanks to all of you (and most especially Stu for sharing this utility with us)! It's exactly what I was looking for and I do remember seeing it but could not remember the utility's name. I had apparently previously downloaded it but never had the chance to try it out. And thanks for the speedy reply!

Am I misremembering or is there a way to export or print a list of all the images used in a show? I know I can look at the .pte file but I thought there was a simple way to get a text list of the images/files used in a show. Maybe I am thinking of one of the user-developed utilities. Either way, I would appreciate a pointer in the right direction as I have searched the menus and the help files and come up empty. Thanks in advance.

Jeff, We live in northern Arizona just north of Seligman (between Williams and Kingman). Last March we drove up through Vegas to Pahrump, NV, then to Death Valley, down through the Mohave Preserve (past the Kelso train station) to 29 Palms and spent a day in Joshua Tree NP. The wildflowers were just gorgeous everywhere. One of these days I'll get around to putting some of the photos into a show. However, while we were avid tent campers many years ago, we upgraded to a 28-foot RV a few years ago. We tow a 4-wheel drive and are accustomed to "dry camping" so we do get into some pretty remote places, but we aren't quite as flexible as you with only the car and a tent or cot. We do bring along both our dog and cat, but the cat doesn't go outside and the dog is a small sheltie we keep on a leash and close by due to the danger of coyotes out here. And I did recognize the spider as I often see them on the road near our house while I'm out walking. One of the benefits?? of remote high-desert living.

Glad to see you back with us, Jeff! Hope you are on the road to recovery. I thoroughly enjoyed the show. We drove through that area last spring to see the wildflowers. While somewhat desolate by many people's standards, I think the area still has a great deal of beauty. Even though the weather was not what you were hoping for (or apparently expecting), the snow and the lighting made for some spectacular pictures. I really enjoyed the photography and the sequence of clouds and textures at the beginning and end were nicely done. I also enjoyed Sammi's encounter with the spider. Thanks for sharing!

Lovely photos, nicely blended colors on each slide, and I just love the presentation. It is indeed a very elegant way of showcasing the shots from your garden. Your talent just amazes me, Dom. When do you have time to come up with all of these animations? Thanks for sharing!!

Ronnie, I can't speak as to how Dom might have done it, but here is a link to a large number of Photoshop Actions for creating mattes and frames. Many of them will create similar beveled mattes and frames. Action Central - Matte and Frame Actions