JudyKay

Guilt and duty call, so here is a comment (this kids will just have to go hungry a few minutes longer): Awesome! I always wanted to see an icestorm--today I got to! The pictures took on a bit of a journey from awe, to humor to pathos to the wonder of being a child again. Awe at the marvels of color and power of nature (Ok, so God actually does it); humor of the poor Rudolph with his bright and freezing nose; pathos of the loss of loved ones in the grave yard, set off by the hope of the living represented by the bright colorful flowers set against the dull gray stones of death; and best of all the wonder of being a child thinking of fairies and sugar plums, nosed pressed to the window, or reaching up with a mittened hand to touch the miracle of a million child-sized icecycles. When I was little my teacher had a piece of amber with a bug inside. That was so amazing! But here in these pictures you captured all kinds of beautiful things (no bugs--thanks!) inside a pure crystal kind of amber. One tiny complaint (please forgive me), but while the music is beautiful, it feels more like 11:00 PM in a large empty grocery store, than a little girl discovering the miracle of leaves and wire barbs frozen in winter ice. Thanks! jk

Thanks you for sharing. Your slide show is a reminder of some of the really neat things P2E can do with subtle zooming and various transition effects combined. My slide shows start by zooming like a mad rabbit all over the screen, then I have to slow them W-A-Y down before sharing them with others. I love to look at the slide shows, and can think of so many things to say--mostly I wish I could sit down by the author and listen to all the stories about each picture--but real life is so busy! Sigh... Still, thank you again for sharing something ELSE you enjoy other than just working hard all the time. The leaves, flowers, textures and colors and music are lovely. jk

You can start music at any slide. Just "Customize" the slide and add music at the "music" tab. You won't be able to see the wave form or "play" from the timeline though you can preview. There are other related limitations in the timeline view, but this is a method that works. You can also just customize the entire sound track in Audacity or some other sound editing program and add silence to the beginning of the soundtrack. Perhaps we will someday be able to move waveforms and multiple sound tracks around by dragging them--like we can drag slides around now. Did I dream it? or did Igor say he was working on something like that? jk

Allow "Customize Slide" Dialog to Stay Open. Right now, every time I customize a slide, I have to close the dialog box and open a new one for the next slide. Just leave the box open and let the user select one slide after another for some fast customization. Thanks! jk

Breathtaking shots and colors. They look so wild and free and beautiful. Makes me want to face the big yellow sun, spread my wings till they ache just a little, and launch out with the warm wind rushing past my face. jk

Wow! Thanks so much! I feel 8 years old again. I remember being at Grandpa's house and fighting with my sisters for the old wood-handled stereo viewer. We managed to break the handle off, but the pictures are still around somewhere... Where I live, I probably can't buy such glasses, but am working on a way to make some. The Internet is chock full of resources. Making your own may be best, because you can make interchangeable lenses red/blue/cyan/blue-green, even Pulfrich (light and dark) lenses Has anyone tried Pulfrich glasses (light and dark lenses) with P2E animation? What speed and motion types work best? jk

Such a silly question, but do you wear special glasses? How do you see the 3d effect? I have squinted and turned my head really fast and peeked with one eye and then two, hid behind the door and peeked really fast, swayed side to side like a snake charmer, turned my head to the side and looked sideways. Sometimes I think I can see it and then it is gone. jk

Just press Tab or whatever and a tiny slider bar appears at the bottom of the screen for 3 seconds. It allows you to navigate quickly to a new location in the slide show. Kinda like a video or audio player. It may as well include a time estimate for teh slide show as well. jk

I hope I am not too bad for posting this message here, but can't help myself. Happy Thanksgiving to all! Even to my British friends. My British friends say they celebrate Thanksgiving on the 4th of July because they are so thankful to be rid of us rebellious Americans who only dump perfectly good tea into the ocean! All such "rubs" aside, I am truly thankful for each of you, my friends. I am thankful for so many things I can't begin to say here, but I am really thankful for P2E! Most of of all I am thankful to God. jk

We can copy and paste objects on the screen from one position to another. Good Presently we can copy and paste objects with child objects to another location in the same picture or even another picture. Good! It would be helpful to drag and drop one object onto another object within the Objects window. Example: button could be dropped onto three different picture objects within a window. Example: I quickly make a button and realize I accidentally made it the child of another object. I just drag it back to be the child of the object I intended. Options to include in this feature: 1. Ability to choose to Copy or Move the object 2. Ability to choose whether to keep the original size of the copied object or have it resized to fit the scale of the target object. 3. Ability to choose which (if any) child objects to copy. jk

If what you want is to have the same arrangements of buttons and text on another picture, then you can just control+click on the objects you want on the screen, and then copy and paste them onto the next picture. Everything is all lined up exactly the same. Now that is =F=A=S=T! Another trick (follow this closely): 1. Arrange some objects (text, buttons or even animations) like you want them. 2. In the Objects windows, select an object with all of its child objects that you want to copy to another picture 3. In the Objects window of the new picture, Select the Object (usually the main picture) where you want to copy the objects and paste them there. 4. Note: If the object you are pasting to is a different size or orientation than the object you pasted from, then you get different-sized pasted results. Hope that is more clear than muddy. Maybe someone can make it simpler with an animation or something? Yes, a click on/off grid would be helpful! The grid should should be scalable. When fading from one picture to another which contains the same objects, the objects should be perfectly aligned. jk

1. Filenames with Chinese characters are not recognized by PTE. The file is displayed with question marks in the character locations, and the file is not recognized as a picture image. I use Lupus Rename for batch file renaming, but it also does not recognize Chinese characters. So...unless someone has a working idea--I guess I just can't use Chinese characters in filenames for now. 2. PTE does not allow Chinese characters in Comments or text Box objects. What you can do is create a PS image using the symbols you like and use that. 3. PTE does everything else I can think of, so we can live with that for now jk

My equipment may have not helped much to make this prettier--but it didn't need to. Those fall pictures are sooo lovely. I really liked the blue blue sky and the water reflections. What I really like is that you used a iphone to get them. I am not anti-professional, but I am a little bit anti "I am a professional" mentality if people let that limit their photography. What I mean is this: Life is more than a camera; photography is more than a photograph; a walk in the park really is more important than hassling a Hasselblad (it even has too many letters to spell). Recently I was traveling by hard seat (mostly poor village people and students) on a train across China. People were splayed in gruesome positions trying to sleep. One sitting on the floor, head lolling back in a neighbor's lap; another leaning on his neighbor's chest, looking for all the world like the remains of a hanging victim. Mouths gaping open. Sprawled on the floor like war zone aftermath. All I had for taking pictures was my 30D buried in a backpack so it wouldn't get stolen. Besides, how to pull out a $2000 piece of machinery the size of Texas, screw up your face, adjust your zoom and "CLICK" away? Now, the lady beside me had an...you guessed it...iphone. She happily snapped away without an apparent suspecting person. Then we would look at her pictures and giggle, making the hours pass a little more tolerably. Before we de-boarded, she showed me one last appalling picture--one she took of me sleeping. jk

You guys focus a lot on the professional world. Many P2E purchasers may not be professionals. I am not a professional. But I love tinkering with many of the things P2E will do. That is why I bought the program. Most my slide shows aren't worthy of being posted, but they are still really cool and fun. Family and friends love them. The rules you provide as a result of your experience and knowledge are great guidelines for those of us who are learning. Applying healthy imagination along with general guidelines results in some really awesome slide shows. Here are some pet peeves: 1. Slide shows that move too slowly. Better to have it go a bit fast and make folks want to see it again. 2. P/Z that make you dizzy. 3. P/Z that leaves you wondering what the point of the picture was. Pet Likes: 1. Bright shiny twirling objects now and then. Sometimes effects is what P2E is all about. Flaunt it! Think "The Dom." 2. Pictures that tell a story. Or a slide show that has a clear interesting story. Then leave out the shiny twirling stuff. 3. Fast or slow--depends on the context. Remember the fast jerky cool "Macarena" slide show? I loved it! It had a story I wanted to know. I try not to think too much about what "I want" unless it is just for fun for me. (Lot of twirling shiny fading objects). Better is to think what does my audience want. This is my gift to them. Anyway Igor and you guys are my heroes. So keep up the good work. jk

Thank you for sharing Peter. I really like it. It is soft and gentle and relaxing. Thank you for coming up with all the bird names! Do you just know them? Or do you have to look them up? The music and sound effects are very soothing. This is a slideshow to put in my "To Keep" Folder. I like how your photos have a consistent color tone and softness throughout. The alligators made me a little nervous, but they look harmless enough in the pictures. Now I want to go visit a swamp! jk

I have been happy enough with Microsofts' Power Toy Re-sizer. It is very fast and convenient and you can right-click to get the job done. For Email quality pics its fine. http://download.microsoft.com/download/whi...wertoySetup.exe or if you have trouble... http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloa...ppowertoys.mspx jk

Well...... (looking down, toes pointed anxiously at each other), I really should back up, but don't. I have never tried saving a template, because it always sounded too much like MSWORD templates which I hate. Maybe I tried it once back about version 2.0 (?), but I didn't know what it did, so promptly ignored it. Can we call it something else? I know someday there will be a terrible disappointment, if I don't back up. On the bright side, I do back up all finished slideshows. Once I have finished a project I like to leave it alone, Its done, and I am off to the next thing. I have some old shows that were very very simple. Oh, and remember the "Dance the Macarena" slide show? I still have it and love it, but still can't reproduce what they did in that show. Just enjoy the nostalgia and move into the future. Bottom line, I could probably figure it out on my own, but haven't. I value the tutorials you folks have made hugely (even though I hate manuals in general--I like to learn the hard way). So if you make one, I for one will be grateful. jk

I assume (?) it's OK to let my family listen to a CD that I purchased, even though the kids didn't actually buy it. I assume it's OK to let my friend who comes for tea and listen to my new CD, even if she did not buy the CD. I don't struggle with much guilt when I rip a CD for my mp3 player. I assume there is not too much guilt if my friend and I share a pair of headphones and listen to the ripped mp3 together. I assume that if I put some pretty pictures together to look at while I listen to the music with my friend that I am not stealing anything. I also think that if I was a struggling musician (or a rich musician) and someone rationalized a way (even in gray areas) to cheat me out of money I worked hard to earn, that I would think what they did was wrong. If someone uses copyrighted music to sell or advertise their own product, or make any kind of profit; that seems like stealing to me. But what if you use copyrighted music in a slideshow used to raise awareness for orphans? Or to obtain funding for among your neighbors for the republican party (or tupperware)? What if you put together wedding pictures for friends (for free), but you realize your friends are likely to reproduce and share quite a few copies? Well I don't do that, so now that I stirred the bee's nest, I'll just skip along now. Probably common sense, an honest conscience, and the Golden Rule are pretty good guides. If you are worried what you are doing might be pushing "fair use" to far, or if you worried about who might come through a bolted door, then you probably shouldn't do it. Set a standard and then keep it for yourself. There will always be someone else taking more liberty than you do, but "someone else" isn't the standard. The rationalization slope is very slippery in my experience. 5 cents worth jk

I am playing with some zoom techniques like zooming into a building then blurring for a second to simulate the effect of moving "through the glass" and then being inside. I think this could work with the squirrel. For example you could zoom in, then blur a bit as if you were going through a patch of grass. And there! Behold! is your squirrel! Then you can zoom right on on her little nose holes. Zooming out could be done the same way. Maybe you could even zoom "through a chimney" or any excuse to blur the picture long enough to load another image much closer up. What else could you zoom through? Water, a person's eyes, a photo, glass, a door; any obstruction like a tree, car, or frame such as a doorway where the objects inside could suddenly emerge from inside of the frame. It works in my imagination, now let's see if it works in P2E! jk

Please don't even check your Email. Just have a real vacation. You have my permission. jk

I am very happy (and a little embarrassed) to tell you, that after updating Office 2003 with all the latest goodies, PTE adjuster works wonderfully. So if anyone wants to know...there may be some issues if you are not up-to-date with service packs. Thanks to you all--I might have given up if you hadn't kept encouraging me. A Happy Camper:) jk

Thank you for your patience with me:) I have gone through settings and they seem ok. Security is set to "Low" But I cannot open the "VB references" in the macros as it is grayed out. The VB Project is password protected. Could that be why? I am not able to edit the macro's or vb code. My system hangs at the point of attempting to choose a directory opening a directory. I click on ":Choose A Directory" and then select any directory (I have tried several choices). The little fingers just strum forever (nothing happens). I use Norton AV --I have tried disabling AV. / Office Pro 2003. I do NOT have SP2 installed. Maybe that has something to do with it. I will keep tinkering. Thanks you so much, jk

I use office 2003 and cannot open pte files. The system just hangs and I have to use Ctr+Alt=Del. jk

Smooth as a whistle! What a cool idea. It was like riding in a hot air balloon with controls and having a piano in the basket just behind me. But....what are those rug-looking things? Rugs? jk

Here is one more....k? PHOTOGRAPHY/GRAPHICS (Out of 5) The pictures were sooo sad! It felt like a wise stately old man no longer appreciated by the grandchildren. It also made me wish i was 12 a could discover a place like that for a fort! What a wonderful scary delightful place for a secret garden and 4 neighborhood kids to explore! Then there was that one picture of vines around a window--it looked like Jesus crown of thorns. SOUNDTRACK (Out of 5) I don't know if it was the pictures or the music tha made me almost cry. The music was so B-I-G and deep and open--like the pictures. TIMING (Out of 5) Just right. Sad shows can seem soooooo long and I get tired really quickly. this one wasnt like that. It was interesting, sad and told its story and was over. I almost wished there were a few more pictures, but if there had been there would have been too many. So instead I watched it again to see if it was like I thought it was. It was better the second time--I saw a lot more. PTE MASTERY (Out of 5) Fancy stuff was minimal--used to emphasize the photos instead of emphasize fancy tricks with video. I like that. WATCHABILITY - Couldn't finish / Watched Once / Would watch again / Would watch many times Probably won't watch more than twice, but I am really glad you shared it. I want to use it to show children and make up stories about who lived there, what life was like and imagine having a secret club there. OVERALL SCORE AND COMMENT (Out of 20) Why does Europe get all the best abandoned houses? I am really glad you had that last picture of teh original mansion and ended with it. It was what saved the whole thing for me and made it real and made me want to see it again.