JohnB

Thank you, Peter, for an excellent demonstration. I am very glad that you are teaching us Association Croquet and not the inferior Garden Croquet which some of us in this part of the world have to play. Please continue with the good work. May I suggest that you have a go at making the start absolutely clear — I find that some people still argue about roqueting if they haven't been through the first hoop. (I know your example implies the correct situation, but it needs to be spelt out.) Also, what about having a look at the boundary conditions and where exactly to place the ball on return to the game. The rules are quite clear, but arguments still arise. Many congratulations on starting such a good and necessary work. John

A friend and I wrote a resizing action a year or so ago and thoroughly tested it on a variety of machines. we found that some machines act differently even if they are all running XP Pro. This action has been tested on Photoshop CS, CS2 and CS3 running on Windows 2000, XP Home, XP Pro and Vista home. The action handles portrait and landscape images automatically and puts the result in a folder the user specifies leaving the original files alone. You can put a white line round the image if you like. I've written the step by step instructions in simple English so that even those not very experienced with Photoshop actions can load them. There are three things to note especially: (1) there is no mention of dpi; the dpi is totally irrelevant when sizing images for projection. How I wish this old red herring could be laid to rest! (2) Very gentle automatic sharpening is applied using the 'bicubic sharpen' feature. This sort of automatic sharpening has been tested by over a dozen users to be the best when downsizing for projection. In the very unlikely event that you are not downsizing, you should omit those steps. (3) It may seem very peculiar to both experienced and inexperienced users to be so fussy about the 'dummy' image which is used to let you record the action. We found that on some machines Photoshop would not record an action which did nothing (like, for example, flatten an image which is already flat). This behaviour seems to be unpredictable, we could record a 'nothing' action on some machines, but not on others even if they were both using the same version of Photoshop and the same operating system. We haven't found out why this is, but just got round the problem! Good luck to everyone John (let's hope the attachment is uploaded properly) Automated_image_resizing.pdf

Adobe Gamma loader must be disabled if you are using a hardware calibrator/profiler like Spyder or EyeOne. If you don't you have two profiles 'fighting' each other. The easiest way I've found to be sure that Adobe Gamma loader is disabled is to change its extension from exe to exf. I expect that more skilled computer buffs will know a more elegant way.

Harvey, Thank you, I felt sure it would be obvious once it was pointed out. By bad luck, I had added the comment after I had finished with o&a page so never spotted that the comment appeared on that page! John

I need to be able to display image titles (taken from the file names) for a show of about 600 images and don't want to have to type all the image titles, some of which are in Latin and would need much care. I've had no problems getting a good looking title (pleasing font and colour) for each image using the comments feature in both p2e4 and p2e5, but is there a way to make the comment display fade away after, say, 4 or 5 seconds? Normally it stays on during the entire display of the image sometimes obscuring part of it. I've tried to use the daughter image feature in p2e5, but couldn't find a way of getting the comment text into the daughter. I expect I'm missing something obvious, but could someone help? johnB

Several members (including me) have written at length on the importance of proper colour management in this forum; this latest group of comments largely repeats what has been said before several times. I'm not good at handling forum entries, something always seems to go wrong when I try to join replies together. So here is my request — Could someone collect all the comments/replies/opinions on colour management together and put them under one heading in this forum? I'd be happy to go through them then and delete those that merely repeat something already said, and those which (I'm sorry to say) are wrong. There is a lot of rubbish about colour management on the web and I'm always sad to see that someone new to the subject has found one of those erroneous articles and writes to this forum (and others) for help when nothing goes right. Once again let me strongly recommend that excellent book "Real World Colour Management" by Fraser, Murphy and Bunting; it's not an easy read but you can acquire the necessary essential understanding without going to the expense of taking a Master's Degree in Colour Management. Many thanks in advance to the forum expert who has a go at collecting everything together.

Jeff, Colour Management is not something to be dipped into, you have to make a decision about whether you're going to do it properly or not bother. Doing it properly means being rigorous about the way you calibrate and profile every item in the image chain. It's no good profiling your monitor unless you profile the projector as well (if you're going to show AVs). Similarly, you have to profile your printer as well as your monitor if you expect to get prints which looks like the image on your monitor screen. You have to be strict with yourself about the settings on your devices -- for example, if you profile your projector with the lamp set to economy and use it in a small room, it will not be right if you then set it to normal and use it in a large hall. If you use your printer with different paper from that you used when profiling it, the results will be terrible. I've being doing colour management on my system for about three years using Gretag Macbeth (now Xrite) equipment and have no problems apart from the one you can't get over: a printed image viewed by reflected light gives a different psychological impression from one viewed on a monitor by emitted light. However, the effect of even that fundamental problem can be reduced by being very careful. Have a look at that excellent book "Real World Color Management' by Fraser, Murphy and Bunting -- expensive but worth every penny. Also don't trust 90% of the articles you read in photographic journals and on the web. Don't give up -- a show to an audience when every colour is projected correctly is very rewarding. Of course, it doesn't help when equipment manufacturers don't do things properly, let's hope ATI will realise that it doesn't do them any good in the marketplace to make equipment which doesn't work correctly. John

Bonjour Stéphan, Once again an excellent show! However, I was a little disturbed by the slide numbers at the top centre of each image. The music was played at a cracking pace -- too much so in my opinion -- and the second and third trombones overblew disgracefully; but those faults weren't in your hands. Your images were superb! JohnB

Bonjour Stéphane, Yet more marvellous creations! A real joy to listen to and to watch. I've played in the orchestra for The Creation many times but never with such inspiring visuals. Please tell us who is performing. Please let us have Part 3 as soon as you can! Best wishes JohnB

Thank you, Stéphane, I will now sit down with my dictionary! John

Bonjour Stéphan, I like your latest show very much, but think it is harder to 'get into' than your earlier two, which may account for the reservations already posted. Your creations are of much higher artistic level than most (if not all) of the shows in the forum and elsewhere and therefore demand much more of the viewer/listener. If I may draw an analogy with music; I think Stravinsky can do no wrong, but admit that his later music (like, for example, the Canticum Sacrum) makes much greater demands on the listener than his early, easier compositions. Do, please, carry on with your inspiring work! JohnB P.S. It's 58 years since my last French lesson at school; would it be asking too much to ask you to post the words of your shows (txt files will do) so I can gain a greater understanding of what is going on?

Thanks for a very helpful message -- I had exactly the same symptoms about a year ago and it's good to have everything set out because I can't remember exactly what the optician said. In my case the floaters gradually disappeared after a few months. but (bad news) the coloured flashing is still there. I've learned to live with it, but it's still a bit disconcerting if I turn my head suddenly when driving. My best wishes for the future.

Merci beaucoup, Stéphane, The file I loaded this morning was 27MB, no wonder it didn't work! Your sequence is without doubt the best I've ever seen — such imagination combined with excellent technique. I think I'll give up trying to do AV sequences as I'll never reach that standard. John

Bonjour Stéphane, I would love to see your slideshow, but I have a problem: when I click on the exe file I get the message 'slide show not found'. The others haven't had that problem, so what have I done worng? John

Many thanks, I felt sure it must be fairly easy -- I just couldn't face trawling through pages of the forum. It looks as though I'll have to buy p2e for him because we are in the UK and sending money to the USA without e-mail can take forever!

Hello Igor, Belated Birthday greetings. I've just been asked by a friend who has not got round to being connected to the internet how he can get a legal copy of p2e. When I got my copy, I had to log on to get it registered and be able to have more than 10 images -- that was very easy but what about someone who isn't connected? Obviously I could download the program, copy it onto a USB stick and take that round to his house, but how do we tackle registration? Also, how does he pay without PayPal or whatever? There must be an easy way, but what is it? Sorry if my question has been anwered somewhere, but searching through the whole forum takes quite a time. JohnB

I did a little experimentation when I first had an XGA projector. The manual claimed that it could cope with all resolutions from 640by480 to SXGA -- it could, but only if you weren't worried about picture quality. Small details and text were noticeably impaired at all resolutions other than its native one. I think the only safe thing to do for best quality is to feed the projector with its native resolution. Switch the laptop resolution from its native to what suits the projector because it doesn't matter what the image on the laptop looks like when you're using a projector. Sorry, can't advise about which video card to buy except make sure it's quiet, some of them have very noisy fans.

Hi Lin, Thanks, While I searched for my Creative installation disc, I remembered that when I first installed the sound card I had disabled MIDI saying to myself, "I'll never need MIDI again". It was easy to add MIDI to the installation and I can hear your sounds now. Your test is excellent and I now know for certain that I'll have to buy a better video card sometime soon. Thanks again for your always helpful letters, John

Hi, I don't get any sound with either version; I'm using a Creative Sound Blaster sound card which normally works very well indeed. My computer is not too happy with the 'big' version, but runs the low ram version OK. Should the final 'uncut' puzzles be different sizes? On my machine, one has the words underneath the puzzle and the other has them over the puzzle, is that right? John

Hallo Brian, I've attached (I hope, I'm not good at forums) a test card I've used for a couple of years. It's a collection of grey scale patches and tells you at once if there are any colour problems in your set up because some of the patches become tinted. This is a far more sensitve test for the human eye than an array of coloured patches. A correctly profiled lcd monitor viewed on good conditions and a correctly profiles digital projector should show all the patches, except perhaps the 1% and 99% ones. A good CRT monitor may show all the patches; my old iiyama CRT would show all the patches provided the weather was not too bright (the 1% and 2% would disappear if the sun was shining brightly outside). I think your idea of a standard set of tests is excellent and hope lots of people come up with good ones. John

I note they don't specify the particular colour space -- that must explain why so many pictures in magazines look very strange! But is colour managing so very difficult? The slide viewing programs Thumbs+ and Irfanview, to name but two, have colour management built in.

A quick reply: in an ideal world entrants would indeed submit their images in the specified colour space, but they don't! Last time, we had sRGB, Adobe RGB 1998 (the one we asked for), CMYK, Greyscales with different gammas, as well as several unidentifiable ones which looked very peculiar. In the analogue world things are a bit better: we usually find nowadays that slide mounts are 5 by 5 cm but until a couple of years ago we used to get a few medium format slides as well! And don't to talk to me about print mount sizes! The only way we forced people to use the size asked for was to completely reject all those that were wrong one year -- this caused a real stink, but seems to have done the trick.

I'm afraid your first paragraph isn't the whole truth. You're considering only the output side of the digital imaging process; the input side has to be included as well. That means the profile attached to the image (by the camera if it's a good one) has to be 'carried forward' across the computer onto the output side. So the overall colour profile of the whole system (if I may invent a convenient concept) is NOT independent of what PTE might do to the image. See my reply to Igor about monitors etc. Basically I agree with you, but I submit that the capabilities of the output device aren't the whole story.

I agree that most output devices have the sRGB gamut, but some don't. A good quality projector when profiled using the GretagMacbeth beamer can approach the Adobe RGB 1998 gamut, according to GretagMacbeth. And there are (very expensive) monitors which can even exceed the Adobe RGB 1998 gamut. However, the ultimate gamut of the viewing device isn't the whole story, what we need to do is handle profiled images correctly. For a competition, it isn't really ethical for the organiser to change a submitted image in Photoshop using a perceptual, or relative colorimetric, or absolute colorimetric conversion (-- WHICH?) to suit his/her own set-up. If someone is making a PTE sequence for him/herself, everything is under control and choices can be made without having to consider other people. But if we want to create a file so that a succession of images from many different (say, 100) people can be viewed so that every image is given the best chance, we need proper colour management. Sorry to be so dogmatic, but I've been involved in the problems of what to do with images having different profiles, and when it is frequently impossible to contact the originators for their opinions on how to proceed.