JRR

Eric: The magic wand selection will only be partial if you click only once, you have to click a number of times to get the selection (with the magic wand set to add to the selection. I can't tell you how to that in Elements as I don't use Elements) Each time you click the WAND it will add pixels within a range of the value that you click on, you have to work at it to select it all. You may run into issues when clicking on the darker parts in that it will then select outside the moon. so you have to remove that selection by whatever tools you are familiar with. If the magic wand doesn't give you the results you want by multiple clicks, you could try the elliptical marquee tool There are many ways to skin a cat in PhotoShop (Elements) as with any software. Peter's recipe is a very good one.

Eric: I think you are going wrong at step 5 You should be making the new transparent file you created in step 1 active and then doing the edit paste into it. That will put the moon picture as layer 1 on a transparent background Then carry on as you describe

Eric: Did you do the INVERT selection and DELETE as per Peter's instructions (second and third last points)? I click on OK when I get the dialogue box you attached to your post (leaving it at NONE)

Very good sir! (reminds me of a show I did with a lion that winks at the audience at the end of the show) I'll be careful not to suggest anything else

Lin: Great little cube I had to watch it a couple of times as I was positive I saw the huskies' tongues moving independently of the overall image. It was the interplay with the falling snow I think, but for a while I was saying "how the heck did he do that !?!?!"

Thx Ken

I am looking at upgrading my laptop. There is one I am looking at that comes with Win 7 Home premium 64 bit. It has a Intel® Core™ i7 processor, 6gbRAM, 1Tb of drive space and NVIDIA® GeForce 250M graphics Not being a techie and understanding these things.... I assume that PTE will work in a 64 bit configuration and that I can transfer the .pte file back and forth between the laptop (64 bit) and my desktop (32 bit) with no problem while I am working on a presentation. Another luddite question: Will 32 bit software work on a 64 bit system - I would like to assume so, but... Thnaks

Try here (It is the next PTE forum in the list of forums) Templates are great, but nothing beats doing it from "scratch" to learn the power of PTE

Colin: A couple of technical things re the show that you might want to think about for future shows: You seemed to have left some the default settings in Project Options "as is": - The mouse cursor shows up and is distracting if one accidentally hits the mouse - The show could be advanced by right clicking the mouse. - The show could be controlled via the keyboard. The first two defaults are things most people would turn off in a synch'ed show such as this. The third is a personal choice item. You did seem to have changed the default to keep the last slide on the screen when the show finished (or I was impatient for it to disappear ) Again, that is a matter of personal choice, but I suspect most have the show close after the last slide. Nothing serious, just small points that you might want to consider. If you like the settings the way they are then that's OK.

John: I sent you a private message through the PTE forum message service.

John: I am no expert in all this, I have just had some practical experience as compared to theoretical. I have never calibrated my own projector with my laptop. Simply because we use them in constantly changing conditions. If I am unsure about what I am seeing on the screen at anytime, I have a test image that I can throw up on the screen and do a contrast/brightness adjustment in a few seconds. At our Photo Club though we used did a thorough calibration monthly. I don't recall a gamma setting option in the Spyder2Pro calibration our Club uses (maybe Ed Overstreet might have a better memory) but I am sure I saw the gamma options when the MAC was being calibrated. Just because the gamma might be set to 2.2 on all computers using the same projector, doesn't mean they will automatically be calibrated. You would still need to do a calibration. Having said all that, in all the calibrations I have done, the difference between the before and after has been marginal at least. You will never satisfy everyone with a new calibration, particularly at a Photo Club, as everyone expects their images to look EXACTLY the same at home as at the Club. It will rarely happen for many reasons - incorrect calibrations, old calibrations, difference in reflective screen vs LCD vs CRT etc etc

John: In my limited knowledge of MACs I wouldn't agree with your conclusion. It simply is the luck of the draw if you are going with an uncalibrated, or old calibration, PC or MAC. Would also depend on the settings on the projector. But I agree calibrating a MAC is easier compared to a PC.

John: IMHO, both are essentially correct and the same IF properly calibrated A properly done calibration is only good if the computer/projector combination are being used in the same lighting conditions as the were present when the calibration was done. A change in the the screen, or the ambient light, or the age of the projector bulb, even the wall colours, etc may affect the appearence of the projected image. Obviously substitute a different computer to the same projector will not give you an accurate display without a new calibration with the new computer, either a MAC or a PC) I am a PC user, but I was part of a recent e-mail discussion recently that dealt with a question close to yours. One person reported that their individual images, to be printed, looked very murky on a MAC vs a PC. Another person reported using an uncalibrated projector/Mac combination did not display their as well as an uncalibrated PC/same projector combination. To my limited knowledge it sounded more like a calibration issue in terms of the projector issue. Simply put the PC default output worked better than the MAC. But note I said NEITHER had been calibrated. Here is a note we received from a MAC user in response to the issue: There are a number of issues at play. 1 - Macs and PCs have historically used a different gamma see here which means that (without adjustment) images can appear darker on a Mac or washed out on a PC. With the last release of the Mac OS this year, the default Mac has been changed to 2.2, the same as PCs. Over the next year as most Mac users upgrade this issue will disappear. 2 - Color management is handled differently. On the Mac it is at the operating system level, with its management encoded in any images or presentations developed (this is the reason every pre-press group uses Macs or colorsync on the PC). The color management is futher complicated by RGB, sRGB, Adobe RGB ... 3 - Projectors have a very limited color space compared to most displays, and those color spaces vary as the projector warms up, and as the bulb ages. 4 - DVI vs VGA connections make a difference on how the digital to analog conversion is done. Doing a calibration for the Mac on any display is relatively straight forward (for non pre press requirements) since the OS allows for software calibration. Looking at images or videos prepared on the Mac on the PC or vice versa is more problematic, though the issue is more viewing the images on multiple computers. Apple has a built in color management profiles that can be imbedded in photos or videos, and are readably by Safari or Chrome. There is no equivalent on the PC. An sRGB color space limits the problem, though the difference in calibration of monitors can still make a significant difference. The closest solution for stills is sRGB because it is the smallest color space. In our case there was a possibility of having MAC and PC prepared shows presented at the same venue. The advice for that was: For a presentation that is going to use both a Mac and PC the steps would be: - calibrate the projector for the PC since it requires adjusting the projector, - then do the software calibration on the Mac leaving the projector unchanged. This should give more than reasonable results on both computers, up to the capabilities of the projector. The Mac and PC should use two different connections to the projector in order to ensure that the calibrations are not changed.

I have used PTE many times as a manual show with the navigation bar in view to allow the viewer to interact to some extent, but if you want to be able to pull up two or more images onto the screen randomly at the same time for comparison, no it can't do that. I suppose you could set that up to limited extent by making up slides with 2 or 3 images up at the same time beforehand and having them as part of the show. Your clients could navigate to them via the navigation bar. Another way, would be to have them go through the images one by one, and then have a slide with objects that would take them to (and return from) additional pages that have the various combination and permutations that you think they might want to compare. Just thinking out loud Added later: On re-thinking, my last suggestion might not work as you wanted this as a DVD and I am not sure you could do this via DVD. Maybe you can, but I don't know. You certainly can with the normal exe file production.

My PTE workflow always has me adding a black slide at start of each show, then I add the images I want to use and then put a black slide at the end as well. Black slide is made same size as my other slides, just with a black background. After adding the slides to be used, I then I work up the title and credit slides. I often, but not always use a slide from the show for the title and credit slides. I put the text in via PhotoShop because "I have always done it that way" :) but it can be done within PTE using the text in Objects and Animation. Re how to handle the length of music vs the number of slides... I assume the music came after the images ? i.e. you didn't choose the music before choosing the slides. In that case I assume you want to (feel you HAVE to) use all 80 images. Then you will need to find another complementary piece of music and combine the two in a sound editing software (Many people here use AUDACITY which is free, but there are other software as well) If the music is just marginally short, I have been known to stretch music up to 5% to make it fit the situation (do that in the sound editing software) If the music came first and is KEY, then you have to get tough with yourself and edit the number of images down more. That can be very tough as each picture means something to you and often has a story, how can I drop it ? That is the joy of photo editing. Bottom line: "LESS is MORE", "Leave your audience wanting more" (not feeling that they have seen all your pictures and will never ask you again to show images)

Ray: You might want to check the link again It didn't take me to the Puzzle, took me elsewhere

Dom: Great shots and nicely displayed. As Lin says, a nice use of PTE Merci beaucoup.

There has been at least one lengthy discussion re the quality of jpg one should use in the images for PTE. There is, of course, no one right answer as it is a very subjective issue. Amongst other things it depends on how the AV will be presented (computer screen vs projector), how large an .exe file you are prepared to work with, etc etc There is a very good demonstration of the differences between the quality settings: here in UTUBE You will see the differences are quite subtle.

Hi Colin: 2.8mb sounds as though the images were straight out of the camera. PTE can handle that most times (unless doing a lot of animation etc), but as you found out the issue is with sharing your show. The file just gets too big. We all have different rules, but I use images at about 500kb, lots of folks use smaller ones. Not sure if your Microsft Office Picture Manager would have allowed you to re-size the images in the same folder keeping the same name. If it does next time you won't need to copy the show. So long as the file names don't change PTE will just go with the files as reduced. You might want to do a zip back-up before doing that just in case the names somehow do get changed. Just a thought

So near and yet so far...... BTW there is a software update for the Camera you might want to check into Dom when you get it back

Dom: I am looking forward to your creations with the new "toy" both in still and video photographs. I suspect that Igor will be bring video clips to PTE sooner than he had perhaps originally planned on.

Peter: Amazing!! WOW!! I hate to think what the next challenge will be ! Thank you for doing this

Peter: All I can say is WOW !!!!! Congratulations

Jimbob: Attach one of your MP3 files to a posting on the forum and some of us can take a look at it for you. I seem to recall that itune files need to be converted before they can be used, but don't quote me on that. New edit at 7:26am: Jimbob see here for file types permitted

Carol (and Fersigo) I realize that you have already switched away from AVG Anti-virus, but for others using AVG and finding it slow opening .exe files, see: here See postings #8, 10, 12, 13