lenbartz

Ok...so you don't have to have the whole path in there...as long as they are all in the same directory. That makes life a lot easier. I had it in my head that I had to have the whole path in there, and that I'd have to design it, test it, then go back and change them all and hope I'd gotten them. Thank you for your help.

This being the case, am I correct in assuming that if I'm building a fairly complex menu page that there no way to test it, short of actually burning a CD?

I was HOPING it was that simple...Thanks.

Hi, I'm planning to make a slide show that has a control panel that will play any of a number of show, then come back to the control panel. The control panel itself is one show. Using the Object editor I've added buttons to "run application" that point at the other shows... Problem is...this is going on a CD... what do I put as the path to the correct file, since I don't know what the drive letter of any given CD player will be?

Glad you have time to do all that. I don't. You've made my point. Thank you.

Glad to hear that you can do a fit command with IrfanView. It is a great little program for the price. I use Photoshop almost exclusively, so I'm not really familiar with IrfanView. Why drive a Cavalier when you have a Corvette in the Garage? As to being wrong...no I'm not...what I said was... I stand foursquare behind that statement. It's not my intention to get a war of symantics here. My point was that ImPro saves me tons of time doing the prep work for my slide shows for PtE, because it will create a set of resized proxies from my full res camera files...allow me to select the images I want to put in the show...in the order I want to use them...using a light table viewer so I can pick my images by SEEING them...(exactly the kind of light table people on this forum have been clamoring for) and then drop them all straight into a PtE project! It does ALL of those things...no other program does! ...and all that is just ONE teeny tiny feature set, that's there to support PtE! It's not even the meat of the program. Look...I think ImPro is a great program...try it. If you have trouble with it...ask me. I'll help. If you don't like it...don't use it, it's your loss. The bottom line is...for whatever reason...I would like PtE to give me the option of running on a secondary monitor.

My mistake guys...sorry... I started a firestorm by making a stupid mistake. I transposed the dimensions. Of course you're right...a 768 x 576 image IS a horizontal...and screen aspect ration is 4:3, not 3:4. I'm not trying to claim that it will fit a vertical into a horizontal space. Well you CAN...you just grab the projector and turn it up on it's side! JRR, Yes...you can use fit image to accomplish what I was referring to...which is getting the LONG side of the images to all be the same, whether they be verticals or horizontals. BTW, I was responding to a comment about IrfanView at the time...and I don't think it has a fit command...as least the last version I saw didn't. If it's been added and I missed it I apologize. As to the rest... ...ha ha....sure it is...you just don't know how to use it. That's not surprising. The sales area you were in is specifially designed to NOT look or feel like a typical "Window's" environment. You almost had it...and you aren't the first to get trapped in the sales area and not be able to figure out how to get back. In fact I did the exact same thing myself, the first time I saw it! ( I had forgotten that!) Everything you saw was appearing exactly as it should. The Splash screen appears on BOTH monitors till you choose "Exit, Slideshow, or Thumbnails" from the Splash Screen on the control screen, on the primary monitor. Those buttons don't appear on the other screen because they don't need to...that's the customer screen...they aren't going to need any buttons...they're not in control...you are. When viewing an image, or doing a side by side comparison, right click always takes you back to the thumbnails. From there, there is a button in the lower left marked "Exit"...though it may say "Menu" in the current release version, I'm not sure about that. (He changed it from Menu to Exit, to avoid exactly this kind of confusion.) THAT will take you back to the Splash screen, and from there...you can click exit to get out of the Sales Show. Yes...it does. That's the problem, and what started all this in the first place ImPro's BUILT-IN slide show runs on the SECONDARY monitor. But if you RIGHT click, where it says "Slideshow" instead of left clicking...it will go out and look for a PtE show in the same directory as the images you're looking at...if it finds one, it plays it. ( you have to have a preference set for this first...type "exe" in the "prescan for extension" box in preferences) The problem is, that the PtE show runs on the PRIMARY monitor...which is the wrong place for it. Their house is incredibly "together". I'm very curious about what the "quirks" are that you saw. What's the old computer programmers saying...? "That's not a bug...that's a feature!" I've used the program for so long, and know my way around it so intimately that I don't see things the same way a new user does. Email me...tell me what things you found "quirky" or difficult to understand. I really want to know. A fresh perspective is incredibly important.

Ah...but I DO. Let's just say that I have a set of images whose aspect ratio is 3:4...the same as my monitor, which is 1024 x 768. If I take those images...some vertical, and some horizontal and resize them all to a height of 768, the vertical images will be considerably smaller than the horizontal images. The the horizontals would be 1024 x 768, and fill the entire screen, but the verticals would only be 768 x 576. That just looks wrong. I want all the images to be the same size, whether vertical OR horizontal. ImPro does that in one pass, then export them straight into a existing PtE project in four mouse clicks. No other program at any price will do that. That said...you are absolutely right. IrfanView is an awsome little program and a GREAT buy. ImPro is designed for working professionals, so it's expensive when compared to a lot of things, but to a Pro like me who's looking to save a lot of time, it's a bargain.

>>>>Have you tried running PTE in "windowed mode"? That way you can open it on your secondary monitor / projector. <<<< I CAN ??? Really? How? I guess I'm missing something. When I start a windowed show, it opens on the primary monitor too. The only way I can see is to leave it bordered, start it, then drag is over while it's running... but that seem's awfully crude! Is there a way to specify where a windowed show starts? If there is, great! I'll just make the show the same size as my screen resoution with the borders turned off. But how do I tell it to open on the other monitor. Show me! BTW, I have another thread about this...why don't you reply over there so we don't take this thead off topic! (more than we already have)

All the other "wishes" I've seen are great, but I want to roll all three of mine into one big one. I desperately need to be able to run my PtE shows on my secondary monitor, which in my case is a projector. PtE currently runs on my Primary monitor ONLY...and as a Photographer, I want to show my clients their image on the big screen, while running my studio management software on a flat panel monitor on the table in front of me. I can set up the projector as the Primary monitor, but that's very problematic. Every time I open a program, or have a dialog box, like a print dialog open...it pops up on my projector screen! I'm constantly having to go over to the projector screen during a sale, and drag some offending window or dialog box on to my monitor and out of sight. Also, if I need to do some quick work on that machine, but I don't have clients around, I still have to fire up the projector and burn the hours off my bulb, so I can see my primary display. If I could tell PtE to open it's show on the secondary monitor, via some kind of command line command...life would be SO much better!

Thank you all for your help. It looks like the point may be mute as far as ImPro is concerned. I just got an email from that software's developer, and it looks like they may have found a way to switch the two screens, so they can use the projector as the primary monitor. They are about as "flexible" as you're going to find, but they have resisted this, because in their opinion, setting up your projector as the primary display, rather than the control monitor, is a bad idea. I have to agree with them. I hope, that Igor will look into giving us the option of using the secondary monitor....and NOT just because those of us using ImPro want it. Most people who are doing presentations with a monitor and a projector, already have the projector set up as the secondary device...that configuration just makes more sense. It prevents dialogs and windows from opening on your projected screen, rather than on your monitor. It's a pain to have to set the projector as the primary, just for this one program, when it causes so many other problems. You're going to see more and more photographers using ImPro. It offers so many features for the price now, with more on the way. You should see the stuff that will be in the version that's going to be released within the next couple of weeks. He's added closer PtE integration. You can take a set of full resolution files, and ImPro will automatically make sized down slide show copies for you. You know how...if you need to scale down a set of images, that you have to run a batch action on the verticals to re-size them to one height, then run a different batch action on the horizontals to resize them to the correct height? You don't have to do that with ImPro. You just set the dimention (in pixels) that you want the longest side to be...and it does the rest. Then...and this is the best part...you can use it's built-in file browser to select the images that you want to put in the show...rather than having to look at a list of file names, and drop them right into an existing PtE project! Sweet!!! I can go straight from the camera, to a finished PtE show in a fraction of the time it used to take.

You bet...they are at www.imagefire.com It's a brand new domain, so I'm not too surprised that it hasn't shown up on searches yet. Most of the people looking for it already know where it is, so they aren't searching for it. The program itself was only recently released, but I've been doing beta testing on it for a year. Awsome software. Yes, I have spoken at length with the programmer, and he is about as receptive as anyone you'll meet when it comes to adding or changing things to make the software better. On numerous occasions I've made feature requests or reported bugs and had a new version in my hands on the same day! But he has a number of good reason why he can't switch the control panel to the secondary monitor, so that's just not an option. Switching off the projector wont' work either, because with ImPro in dual display mode the images it displays are always on the secondary. So any way you slice it, turning off the projector won't help. I can still use ImPro in Single monitor mode, and place it on the secondary...that works for me, but we'd like the program to be as flexible as possible, and many people like the dual monitor option. We hate to be in a position where we have to say "Sorry, if you use it in Dual Monitor Mode, you can't use PtE." Especiall when I think ImPro has as much potential as it does. I've used a lot of different presentation software, and this thing blows them all away. A lot of people are using it as a replacement for ProShots. It's so much better, and easier to use. I don't know who the programmer for PtE is, or how closely he...or she...monitors the board, but I'd really like to get in touch with them.

Quickflicks...yes of course, you're right. You can drag the Picture to Exe program window anywhere you want, but when you actually run the show, or click Preview, it will always run on whichever screen you have set as the Primary...that's the problem.

By all means call me Len. Yes, of course I could do that, but the program I am using in conjunction with PtE requires that it's Control Console be on the Primary monitor and the projector be used as the Secondary. That I CAN'T change. So if I were to set the projector as the Primary, then the control console would be in the wrong place. So that won't work...though believe me I've tried! ImPro is the core of my entire digital workflow, so I can't do without it. But...even if I weren't using ImPro, if I swapped the Primary and Secondary, I would also run into the problem that any other programs or dialog boxes that were opened during the course of a sale, such as printer dialogs, or order dialogs from my Studio Management software, would open on the Primary monitor. (the projector) That would really spoil the presentation...and in this business presentation is everything...which of course is why I use PtE in the first place!

I am in desperate need of a way to run my PtE shows on my secondary display...which is a projector. I am a professional photographer, and use PtE to show my clients their images. Until recently I was using a laptop, which cloned the display to the projector, so in effect I only had one display. (same on both) I recently put in a desktop machine with two video cards take full advantage of a sales presentation software program for photographers called ImPro. VERY, VERY cool software. One of the things I love about it, is that it integrates seemlessly with PtE. I can call up the customers PtE show from within the sales presentation, without ever showing the customer an ugly Windows screen. It makes PtE a powerful part of the presentation. ImPro will run in either a single or dual monitor mode. In single mode, everything works fine. Dual monitor mode puts a control console with a set of thumbnails on the primary monitor on the sales table, while projecting full sized images images...with side by side comparisons, and sizing demonstrations...on the secondary display...which is the projector. The problem is, that when you call up the PtE show...it runs in the WRONG place! Is there a way to force PtE to open on the secondary monitor? I talked to the programmer, and he says that as long as there is a way to tell PtE where to open, such as a command parameter, he could, and would add the support to continue to use it. Even if I wasn't using ImPro, I would want to be able to browse to the show on my primary monitor and play it on my secondary. With the desktop color set to black, the customer need never see anything that looks too Windowsish. I want it to be all touchy-feely, not tech heavy. (Windowsish...is that a word?) Please...oh...PLEASE tell me it can be done! Thanks