Lin Evans

Hi Ken, Thanks! LOL - Goad - that's what my pit dogs do to me every morning when I don't get their puppy chow quick enough! Yep, and the constant icy, strong winds on the peak will chill you to the bone even in the middle of summer on most days. These little characters seem to thrive in it while the poor photographer can hardly hold the camera still enough to get a frame.... Lin

Hi Eric, Excellent job! It brings back lots of memories. I will have to chase down a couple of these at our local video rental store and see them again. Recently, I saw Casa Blanca, but haven't seen African Queen or the Maltese Falcon since the 50's. Best regards, Lin

Images from Mount Evans, Colorado of the Rocky Mountain Goat which spends the summer atop the 14,268 foot peak along with the Yellow Bellied Marmot, the Pika, and a few high-altitude birds. Each year in late June at a lower altitude lake area (10,600 feet) Mountain Goat ewes give birth to one or two kids (baby goats). The kids grow quickly and are taken to the summit by their mothers where they play on the steep rocky slopes, snack on wild flowers and succulents and provide great photographic moments for the dedicated wild life photographer. By September the early snows begin, the wild flowers wither and the goats retreat to the lower elevations where they can find food for the harsh winters. The Pika and Marmot burrow in and hibernate for the winter. Snows over 20 feet deep cover the mountain peaks until the spring thaw comes to begin the cycle again. The show consists of high resolution images and is about 82 meg of executable zip. Both MacIntosh and PC version linked below: http://www.learntoma...ntainkidspc.zip (PC) http://www.learntoma...tainkidsmac.zip (MacIntosh) Best regards, Lin

La plupart excellent travail, Jean! Bravo! Cordialement, Lin Most excellent job, Jean! Bravo! Best regards, Lin

Hi Barry, I don't think your point needed "proving." I don't think anyone is arguing the fact that there are lots of poorly used animations as well as poor animations out there in slideshows. What you said originally, and I quote was: Now you know. You have "now" seen numerous slideshows which are using animation effects. My point was, and still is, that users of presentation slideshows both use and ask for animations and effects. For a presentation slideshow software to be competitive it must provide a way to make these and they must be demonstrated so that potential user realize the the software can be used to create them. Fortunately for PTE, the ability is there to both create and use a variety of special effects and animations should the slideshow author so desire. Not only can PTE be used to create and display special effects and animations but as you yourself mentioned, it can do them better than the competition. When and "whether" to use them is quite another issue. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Believe me, it's different because nearly every other household in the U.S. area where I live has either a pickup truck or van which I see "very few" of in the U.K. I've traveled extensively in the U.K. and Europe and you just don't have these larger vehicles which are commonplace here. Transporting a large flat screen here is simple. Not a problem in any way. I've hauled dozens of them for friends with absolutely zero problems or difficulty. In my part of the U.S., hauling a wide screen TV back and forth to a club meeting is as simple as hauling a sack of groceries in the trunk of a typical auto in the U.K. I typically load and carry 500 pound lawn tractors, snow blowers, bails of hay, motorcycles, ATV's and so on every month. I'm "typical" for my area. Drive down my road and you will find perhaps three passenger cars, a dozen large SUV's (suburban utility vehicles) half a dozen vans and a dozen 3/4 to 1 ton pickup trucks and about half of them have camper shells. I do understand, I just don't care to use a projector when a wide screen TV is available. I have used them to display PTE shows, but I much prefer using a much brighter high resolution (1080p) large screen which doesn't require dimming the lights or setting up the projector on a table and finding either a convenient wall or using a screen. The majority of my clients have stopped using projectors and have gone instead to big screen LCD or Plasma displays. The ones who haven't yet done so are waiting for the much improved (over LCD and Plasma) LED displays which are fantastic. My complaint is not about one's preference between a large screen display or projector, thats a personal choice and preference; nothing more. It's about the fact that as a photographer I dislike having to crop my images to fit a non-standard size. It's non-standard because neither dSLR's nor digicams which constitute the vast majority of the formats I use (I also shoot medium format film) are configured for 16:9/16:10. I'm forced to either compose wider than I like or crop away portions of an image I don't wish to loose. If I shoot wide, I'm wasting pixels and I "need" all the pixels I can get because the vast majority of my work is telephoto. If I don't shoot wide then I must totally rethink a shooting style I've developed over more than 50 years of photography and train my brain to see differently. I have nothing against projectors; I simply prefer the large screen display instead. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, I did, and concerning the opening and first parts agree completely. The first part of the show was just demonstrating the bells and whistles of 3D transform and of course nothing that would normally be used in a real slideshow. The middle portions were just demonstrating various possible animations which shouldn't actually either help or hurt a slideshow (certainly shouldn't make anyone "nauseated" LOL) while the last portion was demonstrating a way which 3D transforms could be used in a real show. Whether one likes them or not is of course another issue entirely. Actually, I've received mostly positive comments on it from non PTE users. The other side of this is that even though I posted it on Vimeo where the actual performance in Flash is mediocre, I asked anyone who really wanted to see it in the best light to email me for a link to either a Mac or PC version where things are much smoother and much cleaner. I think some people just don't care for spinning, whirling, twisting and turning effects. One either likes them or hates them - there are apparently not too many people in the middle. The primary reason I put it together was the stress the video and resources so users could determine whether or not they had sufficient resources to permit some of the animations which might really be used in a traditional slideshow. For example, the very nice "Creation" and "Color" shows by Jean-Charles Pizolatto used some animation for both steam or fog rising and a 3D simulation of a camera pan and zoom which both used PNG overlays moving simultaneously while the main image was also zoomed and panned. Though it played perfectly smoothly for me, I think I remember Dom saying that there was one point with his very good system where he had some "jerky" movement. My stress test may be helpful for people to use to determine which certain types of animation are more likely to cause issues. The other thing which we need to keep in mind is the actual size of the display. While Jean-Charles Pizolatto's file ran perfectly smoothly on my system with the display set to 1024x768 I suspect that Dom's system was playing the same show at a much higher display resolution. This greatly increases the stress. So the bottom line is that this demo both shows the possibilities for playing with animation with the new PTE and the potential for using some of the features in a real slideshow. I think there are a sufficient number of straight slideshows demonstrating the great smoothness and images quality of PTE that anyone who is really serious about purchasing the product would certainly not be overly influenced by just my demo but would likely see a number of slideshows before making a decision. Actually, I have both technical demos and real slideshows on my site for download complete with descriptive text so people can tell the difference. I agree that we should be careful to explain to people that a "demo" such as the one I posted on Vimeo is not designed to represent a "quality" slideshow, but designed to demonstrate possible uses of the product beyond the simple zoom, pan and fade. In fact, I am not inclined to post any shows on Vimeo or Youtube which have any "Pans" in them because they simply won't be smooth regardless of the resolution or simplicity. I'm just not satisfied that either Vimeo or Youtube or mp4 h.264 is up to the task of doing smooth pans. Zooms are not too bad, but pans just don't look all that great. That's why we really need to find a way to vastly improve web output. I still would like to see PTE output Flash directly rather than having to convert AVI, MPEG or MP4 to Flash. I think it's possible to produce smooth pans with Flash directly from an Executable. It's definitely something we need for PTE. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jean-Charles, Excellent! Both of your slideshows. The only suggestion I would have for some improvement would be to turn on mipmapping on those few slides where the extreme sharpness causes some "sparkle" during the zooms. Beautiful photography and beautiful presentation. Salut Jean-Charles, Excellent! Vos deux diaporamas. La seule suggestion que je pourrais donner une certaine amélioration serait de se tourner sur mipmapping sur ces quelques diapositives où la netteté extrême entraîne une certaine étincelle "au cours du zooms. Belle photographie et de belle présentation. Cordialement, Lin

Hi John, Yes, there should be areas of water movement which do not blend with other water movement especially where the stream makes a 90 degree bend. Unfortunately, there is no good way yet that I know of to create a smooth curve with smooth motion using a PNG transparency. I guess if I were to spend some time using radial blurs I could simulate a decent curve via spinning a circular cut-out and mask. That's something I will work on for future demos. The slight blackness around the top edge of the Earth is the result of some vestiges of pixels which were not completely erased by the Photoshop action I created to cut out the individual Earth frames. There are a bit over 600 individual Earth PNG files which are used in the rotation animations. The actual pixel display resolution is pretty low for your system, being only about 1024x768 so when the image is displayed at your higher screen resolution they can become visible, especially with the back lighting by the bright orange sun. I didn't spend a great deal of time on the PNG images because the purpose was to tax the system resources. For a more perfect animation I probably should clean up the edges of the Earth, but it's hard to see it on smaller CRT's, etc. No, the link I posted is just to demonstrate that people are beginning to use lots of animation in shows made with other products such as Proshow Producer, MemoriesOnTV, etc. If you can describe somewhat the "content" of the show, perhaps some of us can help locate it. There are a number of demo slideshows on theDom's site, on my site and on some of the French sites. I'm not certain what Ken posted but if you go to my site here: http://learntomakeslideshows.net/ Then go to the "Links" page, there are links to theDom's page, to Barry Beckham's page, to Diapositif (Jean Pierre's French site), etc., where there are demo shows. Also if you click on my Demo Slideshows Link there are about 15 demo shows you can download. Best regards, Lin

Barry, I have a hard time believing that you are really this "thick." I posted the other thread for you to continue your personal quest for convincing everyone that animation and effects do not belong in slideshows, yet you continue to post in this thread where it is totally off-topic. I created this thread specifically for people who want to test their video and system resources using a slideshow designed for that purpose. You have elected to make it a platform for your own personal bias seemingly to convince the reader that the animations and effects I used have no place in a "slideshow." As far as the links are concerned: First, they are not "all ProShow Gold links". In fact, none of them to my knowledge are ProShow Gold links; some are Proshow Producer and others are MemoriesOnTV. Some are links to Google shows and some to Vimeo. No one said that they would "stand-out or that they were in any way anything other than examples where slideshow authors used animation and effects." You are trying very hard to change this thread to something totally off-topic and I'm simply not going to play whatever game it is that you are playing. If you want to continue this, please either do it on the other thread or start a new one yourself with a topic which is appropriate to your intent. Please do not continue to post in this thread about either the suitability of animations and effects for slideshows or about the perceived quality of the slideshows I posted links to. Lin

Hi Howard, It's normal for the slide to be larger than the viewing area at 100% because whatever your native resolution for display happens to be, 100% would represent that size for the image and there is less than 100% of the screen available for viewing. What you need to do is to click in the little block to the left of "close" on the small down arrow in the little blue square and change 100% to something less. If you choose "Auto" it will size the image to fit the available screen space. The purpose of having multiple choices is to allow the user to see not only the image itself, but also objects which may have been placed outside of the viewing area for "fly-in" or other animation effects. Sometimes when creating special animations, I have to manually type in a number as small as 2 percent to be able to see the ends of some PNG objects resting outside of the viewable area of the screen. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Do you have a suggestion about how it should be presented? Best regards, Lin

Hi Ernest, That's specifically the purpose of the ability to show back side or not, please download and view my tutorial on this here and you will understand how it works. In short, you "can" already do what you suggest. It is all explained in the tutorial. It's number 16 (currently the last tutorial in the list). http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7901 Best regards, Lin

Sorry for any confusion. This post was only for Barry and in regards to an ongoing discussion about the fact that people are using "animation" in their slideshows. These are "NOT" shows which have been (to my knowledge) entered in any competition nor do they represent in any way my opinion of what constitutes either a quality or non-quality slideshow. They are randomly selected shows representing what users of competing products (Proshow and MemoriesOnTV, etc.) are asking for and doing with animation and effects. Barry decided to begin an off-topic discussion about the quality and content of a demo show example I posted specifically for users to "stress test their video and system resources" with and constructed of portions of various past demos to demonstrate some of the effects possible with PicturesToExe 6.0. Barry has apparently not seen the use of animation in very many slideshows and I informed him that animation and effects are some of the most frequently asked for features by users of competing presentation slideshow products. Do not confuse the word competing with "competition." This is about the use of animation and effects with users of competitive "products" not about slideshow competition. To understand what this is all about you would have to follow the discussion here: http://www.picturest...showtopic=10652 I want to move the off-topic discussion of what constitutes an aesthetically pleasing slideshow and whatever else about the appropriateness or not of using animation and effects away from my thread about stress testing the video card and here where it has a venue more appropriate for the purpose. The other thread is going far off topic which is both confusing to the reader and detracts badly from whatever value my original post there might have. Any further discussion of what may or may not constitute a "proper" or aesthetically pleasing presentation slideshow should be continued here rather than in the other thread. Best regards, Lin

See my answer to theDom. It has "nothing" to do with slideshow competition but is about the use of animation and effects with competitive "products". Best regards, Lin

Hi David, I understand your reasoning for purchasing the 1920x1080 projector for the club's purposes and that having a larger pixel count image allows for better viewing and a better projected image. I also understand that transporting a large, wide screen display would not work for you, even though it would be no big issue for most here in the US. Just for the record though, and to avoid confusing the reader, throwing away pixels does not greatly affect optical resolution. It's very common for people to confuse the term "resolution" with pixel count and that's the fault of marketing and advertising in the digital camera business. Optical resolution is measured by either lines per image height (in the case of digital cameras) or by counted line pairs per mm in film captures. This value is determined by a combination of lens quality and the number of photosites on the sensor used to "directly" capture the light values across the subject. It is only indirectly related to the number of display pixels used to display an image. So the number of and configuration of photosites (sensor pixels) largely determine optical resolution since for practical purposes, all lenses used on modern cameras have greater optical resolution capabilities than the sensors behind them have. As an example, my Foveon based Sigma SD14 dSLR only creates a 4.7 megapixel display, but the optical resolution is equal in black and white resolution to a 10 megapixel Canon or Nikon capture and the color resolution is greater than that of a 12 megapixel Canon or Nikon capture. Why? Because the Foveon sensor uses over 14 million photosites in a three dimensional array with all three RGB values collected at one relative display pixel location to create each single display pixel, and it captures all three RGB values at this single loci. From these 14 million RGB values, the camera produces a 4.7 megapixel image of high optical resolution. A Nikon, Canon, Olympus, etc., dSLR uses, in a "10 megapixel capture," 10 million CFA (color filter array) photosites on their sensor and interpolates 2/3 of the red and blue color values by averaging color values obtained from adjacent pixels. So all CFA captures (all digital cameras except Sigma) are initially "interpolated." A good example of the non-linear relationship between display pixel count and optical resolution can be seen by examining the Hubble telescope's WFC (wide field channel) camera which produces a four megapixel display and its HRC (high-resolution channel) camera which produces a one megapixel display. The HRC has "much" greater optical resolution than the WFC even though the WFC produces a four megapixel image versus the one megapixel image of the HFC. To understand why pixel count has only a bit to do with optical resolution, think of a capture make using photomicroscopy. A one megapixel capture made through the lens of an 800x microscope has infinitely more resolution than a 100 megapixel capture of the same subject made without the microscope. So throwing out pixels in terms of pixel count by downsampling does not greatly affect optical resolution. The primary factor in optical resolution was determined at the time of image capture and only indirectly affected by downsampling or upsampling. This, of course, is not to be confused with image size and one's ability to "see" this resolution based on our own human visual acuity. We can see a large image much better than a small image from a distance, and it's really the image size and not the pixel count per se which is important. Of course an image made with a greater number of pixels will look "sharper" to us and we will be able to see it better when it is larger (i.e., more pixels) from a given distance than a comparable smaller image, even if the smaller image has greater optical resolution. Best regards, Lin

Hi Reinhard, The feature is new and only found in the 5.7 or 6.0 betas, not in 5.6. This feature works on individual slides and is not a universal feature. It allows creating a border of your choice of color and thickness. Best regards, Lin

Hi Barry, Here is a new thread where you can pursue discussions about the use or abuse of effects and animation in slideshows. I don't think anyone is trying to convince you that animation or special effects are either "good" or "bad" for presentation slideshows. They are simply a "choice" and any decision about either their use (or not) is purely subjective and personal. No one wants to "educate" you about what you are "missing". The point which is being made is that animation and special effects are being used and being used by many, many people making slideshows. They are requested by users of not only PTE but by users of competitive products such as Proshow Gold, Proshow Producer, MemoriesOnTV, m.Objects, Wings Platinum and a host of other presentation slideshow products. Animation and special effects are here to stay whether one likes it, approves of it, loves it or hates it. In order to stay competitive, PTE also must not only have this capability, but someone must demonstrate these effects. Whether you or I believe they are "tacky" or "fantastic" is totally immaterial to the rest of the world. People will accept or reject their use based on individual preferences. Like shoes, one size does not fit all. The links I have given you on the other thread are just randomly selected shows from Photodex users and CodeJam users. They have one thing in common - they all use animation. To me some are decent, some are poor and most fall somewhere smack in the middle of mediocrity. You use the term "mistake" as if there were a right and wrong way to do these things. There is no right and wrong, only different. The only time right and wrong enter into the equation is when there are established, written "rules" governing a particular event such as AV competition. Even then, the "rules" are arbitrary and simply constitute an agreement or consensus among those judging the event. People create slideshows for multitudes of reasons. Some of the results are aesthetically pleasing to some while horrendous to others. It's like art. Those who love realism might embrace the work of Native American Navajo artists Harrison Begay or Jimmy Abeta and hate the renderings of Pablo Picasso and vice versa. The beauty of human diversity is just that; diversity. We all have our preferences and PTE is simply a tool which allows us the latitude to explore those preferences. Here's the link: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10741 Best regards, Lin

http://www.photodex....l=3040128&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=2972209&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3094570&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3087324&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3132263&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3128945&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3084006&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3095223&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3059487&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3125682&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3134840&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=2924686&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3135406&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3124100&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3091674&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3003153&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3135137&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3094389&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3094878&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3094878&alb=0 http://www.photodex....7639&alb=148191 http://www.photodex....5192&alb=148191 http://www.vimeo.com/1357240 http://www.vimeo.com/817061 http://www.vimeo.com/867192 http://www.vimeo.com/1693090 http://www.vimeo.com/1209425 http://www.vimeo.com/932980 http://video.google....19731357178642# http://video.google....32271397&hl=en# http://www.vimeo.com/754095 http://www.vimeo.com/1069952 http://www.photodex....l=2584724&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=2721312&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=2662808&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=2788724&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3136033&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3079217&alb=0 http://www.photodex....l=3079217&alb=0 These will get you started.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Storage could definitely be an issue if your club rents a space and has no way to transport a 52" display back and forth. I forget that in the U.K. you don't have lots of vans and pickup trucks like we have here in the states. Here, it would be no problem at all to transport even a 60" LED wide screen back and forth. As for 100 people huddling around a wide screen, actually that wouldn't be necessary. With a 52 inch display it's quite comfortable to see from a distance of even 40 feet or more. Twenty chairs across by five deep seat 100 people and that would only create a viewing distance of around 22 feet or so for those in the back row. If you only seat 10 in a row you could still fit comfortably into the approximately 40 feet space. My business customers often have large conference rooms with as many as 150 people watching 50" plasma displays. The LED displays can be watched comfortably from even very wide angles without loss of image quality or brightness. The brightness factor is "soooo" much better on an LED display than on virtually "any" projector that they can be easily seen without even killing the lights. Also there is no loss of seating space for the location of the projector. It's difficult to step outside one's comfort zone of use, but even with the very best and brightest high resolution projectors my clients have had (IBM, Hewlett-Packard, etc.) if you enlarge sufficiently to make a really nice sized display, the brightness level is so diminished that the room must be nearly dark to accommodate a decent image. It may not be a solution for your club, but I suspect it could be for many. Yes, of course there are many more users of 3:2 than 4:3 dSLR's and even some of the newer digicams offer 3:2 which makes it even more puzzling for me that displays are all going wide screen. Small sensor digicam users "far" outnumber dSLR users in the great scheme of things, but probably serious AV people have a much greater preponderance of dSLR owners. It's as if the manufacturer's believe that computer users are using their displays more for watching DVD's or BluRay than for computing or displaying photographs. Perhaps gaming is partially driving manufacturing - who really knows? Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Right, but it depends on the dSLR. My pro body E3 Olympus shoots native at 4:3 while my pro body Canons, Nikon and my Sigma dSLR's shoot native 3:2. The majority of older digicams shoot 4:3 with the option of using only part of the sensor's capture (i.e., sensor crop) for 3:2. The issues about projectors are important to those using them for displaying their images, but in all fairness, the "majority" of presentation slideshow software users don't really use projectors at all, but rather create slideshows to be displayed either on a computer via executable or video mode, or on a television screen via DVD, BlueRay or HDMI connect. Projectors (Beamers) are primarily the tool of choice for the business executive using PowerPoint shows or some AVI enthusiasts for shows, etc. They seem to be more popular among AV clubs (not speaking from experience here) to me. I suspect that this practice may change as very good LED (not LCD or Plasma) large screen televisions become popular and prices go down accordingly. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, I'm not sure where you got the 273,065 pixel figure. A 1024x768 image produces 786,432 pixels. It can be interpolated to any size, but that's not the point I was making. Actually, my point has nothing to do with 1024x768 "or" 1920x1080. It has to do with the necessity of loosing pixels (image information) in a crop regardless of the actual pixel count for the final display. The point is to "fill" the screen without having a border surrounding the image and without excess image content loss. In order to fill a 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio with a 3:2 image capture, you absolutely "must" either loose significant pixels or distort the image. I often display my slideshows at four megapixel resolution (2560x1600) at 8:5 aspect ratio and in the past have displayed them on my own display and for clients at 9.2 megapixels. I don't use projectors - actually, even when displaying for clients I either used a high resolution LCD or CRT display or a large screen television. You are absolutely correct that it's possible to have the entire image displayed on screen, but with a 3:2, or 4:3 aspect ratio original capture, there will be an unwanted black border on the horizontal aspect if one fills the screen vertically, or a major crop in the vertical aspect if one fills the screen horizontally with the native capture. Neither, to me, are desirable outcomes thus the need to "crop" my images. Fortunately, PTE Version 6 allows that without actually affecting the original or without the need to perform the crop outside PTE and have additional saved images. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Congratulations on a successful venture back into slideshow projection. I think your conclusions might be "if it's not broke - don't fix it!" The tried and true works wonders and it's always more comforting to know that our equipment will deliver as expected. I'm perplexed as well about the recent move to wide screen aspect ratios, especially since the vast majority of our cameras, etc., are designed to shoot in either 3:2 or 4:3 mode. Even though the newest dSLR's support capture in wide aspect ratios, it requires "wasting" a good portion of the CCD or CMOS sensor's native capture. I strongly suspect that the move toward 16:9 or 16:10 is a concession to the movie and video industry. Actually, it makes it a bit awkward in my opinion to have to crop those images to be used in slideshows from all my photo archives and shoot wide to accommodate the anticipated need for cropping for future use. Medium formats have traditionally been "square" so the recent fascination with wide definitely seems to come from the movie and video industry which seems to be driving manufacturing these days. Again, congratulations on a successful experience. You'll have to consider serving some strong tea to wake up those few old reprobates who insist on sleeping through your shows! Best regards, Lin

Hi David, You know the old saying about "you can't please everyone" .... The younger generation loves animation, movement, flash, etc.; just look at the success of video games and gaming computers! The older codgers like us have little use for it, but the product absolutely "must" have the ability to please not only those of us on the downhill side of life, but also those who will be the future users of PTE. Also, it's imperative that the capabilities of the product be demonstrated. Virtually "any" presentation slideshow product (even something like FastStone or Irfanview) can do simple slideshows. If that's all it took to sell product, then there would never be a need to go beyond 4.9 and the world would beat a path to PTE... Unfortunately, it takes more... Best regards, Liln

Hi Barry, I suspect that you are a bit out of touch with what is going on in the world of slideshow creation and presentation among the competition. Animation effects, transition effects and 3D are perhaps the most frequently asked for features and additions to not only presentation slideshow software, but even for tools like Photoshop. Even Adobe has even added 3D effects, etc., to Photoshop CS4 extended. If you take the time to seriously inquire into the various forums for competing products, you will learn that people want these special features. Whether or not they add anything of perceived value either to you or in any serious way to a photographic slideshow, they are vital to the success of a presentation slideshow product in today's market. If a developer does not put these features in their presentation slideshow software, that product will fail in today's market. Further, if you don't demonstrate that your product can be used to create these effects, then that product will remain in obscurity in terms of commercial validity. The market success of PTE doesn't rest with us old codgers (that includes you, me, Mark, Ken, etc.), it depends on the ability to capture the imagination and interest of the younger generation. You only have to look around you. Open your eyes and mind and you can't help but realize that from cell phones to television, from digital frames to software, and even the web itself; the future is motion, flash and what you may consider foolish gimmicks. It's what the public wants and what a developer must give them to succeed. Actually, you "can't easily see the Earth rotating around the Sun." It takes a year for the Earth to make a single orbit around the Sun and, of course, during that period the Earth rotates approximately 365 times on its own axis. Even from the space station we can't see the Earth rotating around the Sun. As a matter of fact, no living person has actually ever "seen" the Earth rotate around the Sun. So what we can see are simulations of this natural event made with a variety of software tools, and yes, some of them are very, very good. When you were a child in school, I'm certain that at one time or another you probably visited a planetarium where there were mechanical models of the solar system. They were not very realistic, but they served a purpose. Using software such as PTE to create teaching models of our solar system or even a theoretical model of atomic structure is a valid and useful purpose just as using it to display "your" photographs complete with "artistic" interpretations made with various Photoshop techniques such as craquelure, etc., serve a purpose. No, the simulations I make with PTE do not compare with those made by Hollywood which cost millions of dollars to produce any more than your photographic art resembles a Monet or Rembrandt. Neither are remotely representative of the best possible, but that's not the point, is it? As for the question of where various special effects are used in slideshows? If you are truly interested, I will be very glad to link you to literally hundreds of slideshows where they are used. Because you don't download or see shows where numerous special effects are used speaks only to your personal experience and not to any type of statistical validity. Believe me, they are, whether it is in your experience or not. Personally, I don't believe that some of the effects I and others create with PTE add any particular aesthetic value to a serious photographic slideshow, but once again this wasn't the point of my post. I posted this particular presentation to help people test their video cards so that should they want to use features such as animated OOB, 3D transforms, snow, water, or planetary simulations, they would know whether their systems were up to par. I believe that I made that quite clear in the original post. I created this collection to demonstrate some of the possibilities with PTE which may or may not interest everyone. Choosing to use this thread as a platform to express your personal bias and opinions about the show's content is off-topic and deserves a thread of its own. I notice that you didn't even comment about whether it ran smoothly on your system, or really respond to the original thread, but instead chose to use it as an opportunity to express your opinions about the quality and appropriateness of the content. Why not start your own thread and discuss the proper aesthetics of a presentation slideshow? I think there is a valid place for your point of view, but I don't believe it belongs in this thread. Best regards, Lin