Lin Evans

Congratulations Igor and development team!! It just keeps getting better and better!!!! Best regards, Lin

Hi, It's not possible to animate snow with PhotoShop - the Panos FX action creates the snow globe and allows the user to place their own picture inside a frame in the globe. That's the extent of PhotoShop's involvement. The actual animation is done via my template using PicturesToExe so to animate the SnowGlobe with the falling snow you need to be able to run PTE. Since PTE won't run on a Mac in Native mode to use PTE with a Mac you must run Windows on the Mac. There are perhaps other ways to animate snow such as Java but I don't have any references to point you to. here are a couple links you may want to investigate: http://www.usflashmap.com/component/falling_snow_flash.htm Best regards, Lin

Hi John, Actually, I don't think the problem with the keylogger had anything specifically to do with your name or your post but simply was associated with one of the spam posts which when "copied" and pasted (I did it as well as others) ended up spreading the keylogger. The forum software had a security weakness which I believe has since been corrected. The original issue of PTE loosing the association with your files is complex and we may never know exactly what happened. Generally, the safest way to insure that you can "always" link things back in case of equipment or system issues is to use the zip feature. Once you have completed a slideshow just make a zipped backup from the Main Screen via "File" "Create Backup in Zip". Then at any time in the future you can unzip this file in any folder and find the PTE file and all associated images completely safe and usable. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mike, A possibility is that you have only one half of the equation. There is a registration key for PTE and a different one for Video Builder. Are you trying to make a DVD or just create an executable show? Could you give a few more details and perhaps do a search for another reg key and get back? Best regards, Lin

Thanks again Neil - LOL Too bad a "buck" won't hardly buy a cup of Java today!! Best regards, Lin

Hi Harry, Sometimes, depending on the individual music selection, a single "fade" with Audacity isn't enough. What you do is select the last four seconds or so of the song with the Audacity selection tool (right above the little magnifying glass) and then repeat the fade about three times and each time you do it it applies a greater amount of fade. After about the third application of fade it will be much more apparent. Also, be sure that you actually crop off all the song after the length of your slideshow. So if your slideshow is say 3 minutes 20 seconds long, go to the 3 minute 20 seconds position of the waveform in Audacity, use the same select tool and click and drag it to the end of the song to the right. Then hit the "Delete" key on your keyboard and this will delete the rest of the song. Apply the fade as instructed above to the last four seconds or so and export the MP3 under a new name and this should solve the problem. Best regards Lin

Hi Harry, Congrats! It looks like you have the technique down well. At the end you might want to try this: If you don't already have a keypoint near the end of the last slide, put one about four seconds from the end of the slide then another at the very end. Set the Opacity on the Objects and Animations for the next to last to 100% and the opacity for the very last keypoint to Zero and the image will gradually fade to black over the last four seconds. It makes for a nice close and not too abrupt an end. best regards, Lin

Hi Neil, Thanks much!! I have just received same and completed my 2 USD return. The transaction seems to have worked perfectly and it help greatly to know things are working. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ron, On the Tutorials and Articles link, look at my PTE Made Easy series - the map creation is the last one of the series. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ray, Here's another way you "could" do it. I didn't take a lot of time with this so not perfect but it consists of using a cut-out PNG over a jpg of the map and several blue rectangles between with a couple black masking rectangles on top and bottom to hide the blue splash. here's the zipped exe: http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/ray.zip and the PTE zipped http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/raypte.zip Lin

Hi Xaver, Thanks! That tells me that there is no conversion except at the PayPal center. I will test it further and see if it's possible to get it to change with the country. If you have a PayPal account it "shouldn't" ask for your credit card info. I'll check it further. Best regards, Lin

Hi Harry, Congratulations! In order for people to see the executable it must be zipped then placed on a host server. I think Ken can help you with how to provide a link if you place it on Mediafire. Maybe he can help here.... Best regards, Lin

I just finished my commercial site where I will market some PTE AVI tutorials (don't worry, I haven't quit making free ones - LOL). I need someone who has a PayPal account and lives outside the US to make a small donation which I will return to you double. I need to know what you see when you click on the bottom Pay Now button and whether the transaction shows in US currency or in your native currency. If you send me the equivalent of one Euro or if it shows as dollars one US Dollar I will immediately send you double the displayed amount. I just need to confirm that it works properly. Email me first to discuss at: [email protected] The site is at: http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net You can click on the "Purchase" tab then at the bottom of the page (third option down) you can click the PayPal - Click Here to Pay button and enter the amount. Thanks, Lin

Hi Harry, Let me see if I understand this correctly. You have finished with picture one and you want to go to the next picture and make it start on the right hand side and pan across to the left as you see it on your monitor? If so, open PTE and you can begin with the second picture in Objects and Animations by simply clicking on the seconds slide from the Slide List from the opening page before going to the Objects and Animations page. After you have highlighted the second slide, click on the Objects and Animations tab at the bottom and Objects and Animations will come up with the second slide already loaded. Next just set the View to 25 percent or whatever looks good so you can see the entire screen and entire picture. The first keypoint is automatically inserted and will already be selected (blue) when you open the Objects and Animations screen. Just click inside the green bounding rectangle, hold down the left mouse button and drag the image left so that you have the right hand side displayed in the way you want it to look when the slide first appears. Next set the time for this slide with the Customize Slide - Main Tab. Next click on the timeline and create a new Keypoint just like you did for slide one. Drag this keypoint to the right near the right end of the timeline. With this new keypoint selected (blue) put your mouse cursor inside the green bounding rectangle, hold down the left mouse button and drag the picture to the right as far as you want it to pan. Now run the preview and it should work exactly like you want. Best regards, Lin

Hi Harry, Whether you get a pan, a zoom or a rotate "ALL" depend on one simple thing: What you do with the Green Bounding Rectangle when the Keypoint is selected (highlighted). You create a keypoint which you have done. Next you select an appropriate image view by setting the view to about 25% so you can see the entire image and the green bounding rectangle with the little squares. Next you can zoom in or zoom out by dragging the rectangle and making the picture larger or smaller. Or, you can pan left or right by dragging the picture after clicking and holding down the left mouse button inside the green bounding rectangle. Or you can rotate the image by either changing the degrees of rotation in the rotation block on the right side of the screen under the Animation Tab where it says "Rotation" or by using the little curved line with arrows on each end which you will see when the mouse cursor appoaches the right or left side of the center of the green bounding rectangle. You can do any or "ALL" of the above by simply enlarging, decreasing, dragging, etc., the image via the green bounding rectangle (zoom in or out) or click inside hold the mouse and drag right, left, up, down, etc. Setting a greater time for the display is "exactly" how you get a slower zoom or pan. The picture zooms or pans or rotates. How "quickly" it happens depends on the amount of time between the starting keypoint and the keypoint you create. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ray, There are several ways to get a good map image. If the map is amenable, a scanner usually will do a great job. Otherwise, place the map on a wall and set up your tripod and photograph it without flash in a reasonably well lit room with the camera exactly level and perpindicular to the map. If it is a commonly found map perhaps others may have a good copy? Lin

Hi Harry, To get to another image you must click on the tiny right arrow in the far upper right corner of the Objects and Animations screen. You can have multiple zooms, pans, rotates on each image in your slide list. Everyting you do on one page of the Objects and Animations screen relates to only that main slide and any "objects" you may have added to the Objects List. So after you make the first picture do what you want, click on the arrow here: Clicking on this arrow will take you to the next slide with its own timeline, etc. Click on the left arrow to go backward toward earlier slides, etc. Best regards, Lin

Could any of you Mac users help with this question. We know that PTE is not yet MacIntosh compatible, but could those who are successfully running PTE in a compatible mode explain what they are using and how well it's working? Thanks, Lin

Hi Harry, Here's a PDF which may help: http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/harry.pdf Best regards, Lin

Hi Harry, I'm not sure what you mean by "blue triangle stuff". It's really quite simple. Animations happen over time. The blue bar at the bottom of the Objects and Animations page represents time and is called the "timeline". The keypoints are points in time where you decide you want changes. These changes can be zooms in or zooms out, rotations or pans. You place the mouse cursor at the vertical center of the blue bar which run horizontally along the bottom. That center will be a black line dividing the top and bottom blue portions of the time-line. You left click the mouse and that puts a small blue arrow pointing upward at the point where you click. You press the "insert" key on your keyboard and that places a "keypoint" at that point in the time-line. You can place the mouse cursor on that "keypoint" (also called keyframe) and left click the mouse and hold and drag the keypoint along the timeline. If you highlight this keypoint by clicking the mouse cursor on it and then visually change the size or position of the image by using the small squares on the green bounding rectangle (click - hold and drag) then the image will change from how it appears at the beginning of the slide to how you have left it at the keypoint as the amount of time progresses from the start of the slide to the time represented by the keypoint. That's all there is to it. The keypoints visually represent a point in real time corresponding the displayed time on the keypoint. Any changes to the image at the keypoint will gradually happen from how the image starts to how you have made it look by zooming, panning or rotating it at the keypoint. You can create keypoints, delete keypoints and if you want to see what will happen simply left click the mouse cursor over the small blue arrow, hold down the left mouse key and drag it back and forth from the beginning of the slide to the keypoint. I find it difficult to understand that after watching the AVI tutorial you still have problems understanding how to insert a keypoint and create an animation. Did you download it and play it??? Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, Actually no. The dpi is simply an EXIF header tag to tell the print device how many dots per inch or pixels per inch to print the image. The dpi has no relationship to anything else. An image which is 1024x768 pixels will print in an identical fashion whether the dpi is 72 or 720. The image display size changes in Photoshop when you change the dpi without resampling because the closer together you display or print pixels the smaller the image will be at a fixed dpi but an image with 1024x768 pixels still has the same number of pixels. Actually, unless you are printing on a dye sublimation type printer (300 or 400 dpi) the actual print from an inkjet for top quality prints is determined by the print engine. For example, if your image has an EXIF tag which is 72dpi and you print it on an Epson inkjet at the highest quality, it will automatically be interpolated to 720 dpi regardless of the size you ask the printer to give you. For a Canon or Hewlett-Packard this figure is 600 dpi. DPI is informational only for print or display devices which interpret it. For example, a two megapixel image or 1600x1200 pixels printed at 300 dpi will print 5.33 x 4 inches without interpolation. Printed at 720 dpi it would be 2.22 by 1.66 inches (1600/720) X (1200/720). But if it was tagged at 720 dpi the print device would interpolate it automatically to the print size asked for so no pixelation will happen unless you greatly exceed the native size of 5.33x4.0 inches assuming some loss in image quality above the 300dpi magic number which printers are used to using for dye sub type printers. Bottom line is that there is no way to "protect" your image by assigning an EXIF header calling for a particular dpi. Best regards, Lin

Animated images don't necessarily need to be larger than still images. This is only important if you are doing zoom-in's which exceed the 1:1 appearance. You can quickly determine the 1:1 appearance by temporarily choosing "Original" from the "Common" tab "Mode" selection on the Objects and Animations Page. When you switch on the "original" mode, pay attention to how close or "large" things look. That's how deep you can zoom in without using a larger image. When you zoom in really close, you may want to choose a larger pixel dimension for your originals. I would suggest you download my PZR AVI tutorial from the "Tutorials and Articles" section here: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7901 If you watch the AVI audio visual tutorial you will become an instant "expert" at creating pans, zooms or rotates. It's the first of the series and about a 64 meg download. Best regards, Lin

To get a cross-fade you need to not only extend the ending keyframe of slide one past the timeline limit for slide one and beyond the start time for slide two (to your right) but also pull the beginning keyframe for slide two back before the ending timetimeline for slide one (to your left). Use at least a three second fade on each and at least a four or greater second display time for both. click on link below for PTE sample and executable sample made from PTE in zipped format: http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/samples.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Harry, A "CD" will hold the complete set. If you only need the basic steps to the PZR then you only need the first tutorial. best regards, Lin

Hi Harry, First a couple of observations. To get help you really need to use the proper terms so that people understand exactly what it is you are trying to do. There is no "push" or "pull" in PTE. The commonly called "Ken Burns Effects" are properly identified as Pan, Zoom and Rotate which are abbreviated as PZR. You can pan left or right or up or down. You can zoom in or zoom out and you can rotate left (counterclockwise) or right (clockwise). If you look carefully at the opening screen of the forum you will find five different "sections". The third section is called "Tutorials and Articles" and this is where you find the answers you seek. The 130 page PDF User Guide covers everything available at the time of writing which was the release of PTE 5.0. Yes, it is "wordy" but that's necessary because PTE is a complex program with "many" different features. Different folks want to do different things with the program and this makes it necessary to be as thorough as possible when preparing a User Guide. When reading about things you have no interest in it may also, as you describe, be "boring" but remember what is boring to you may be vital to the understanding of someone else who has a different project or different purpose for using PTE. To facilitate learning the different features I posted a series of AVI tutorials called "PTE Made Easy" subtitled PTE for Smarties. The very first AVI tutorial of the series is called "PZR for Smarties" and shows you exactly how to Pan, Zoom and Rotate images in PTE. I'm assuming that by Push and Pull you are trying to zoom in and zoom out. If you will download and watch the tutorial you should be able to easily learn to do this. Here's a link to make it easy for you to find the tutorial: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7901 Scroll down and download the 64 meg "PZR for Smarties" tutorial and watch it and it should answer your questions. Best regards, Lin