Lin Evans

Is it free?? Lin

Hi John, Yes, unfortunately there is no good way other than by visual approximation to get the cube to exacting dimensions. I suppose one "could" use the grid in Photoshop, but a good visual approximation seems to work well. Also, if you are attemption to makeseveral cubes and keep the dimensions constant, then make one and save without the images to use over each time saving with a different name. Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, Yes, this portion has not yet been realized in the beta. Using "silent" mp3's works well for me too - I make them with Audacity. Best regards, Lin

Cèlou posted a very nice photo-cube demo. Back some time ago when I was playing with these I wrote a PDF tutorial on how to do this, but I don't remember if I ever posted it, so for you who are interested: Download it FREE here: http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/cube.pdf Best regards, Lin P.S. Here's the link to the Photoshop plug-in in case you don't have it. Put this in your Plug-In's folder such as: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS\Plug-Ins http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/3DTransform.zip

I believe this one can do that.... http://www.blazemp.com/mirror_video.htm Best regards, Lin

Hi Derek, Go to Project Options, then Screen and look at Aspect Ratio. Your choices include 4:3, 5:4, 15:9, 16:10, 16:9 or Custom which you define. You can essentially set up for "any" aspect ratio with P2E. It would be a good idea for you to go to the Projects Options menu and just click through each tab and contemplate what each choice might mean. If you have questions about what a function choice does, write them down. Go through every choice and think about how that choice might affect the show and why there is a choice. This way you will become familiar with the program's features which might help make it easier to see how this all fits together. Best regards, Lin

But remember that you will have to manually insert any music (copy and paste doesn't work for music files) and you will possibly need to modify the ending transitions and perhaps insert a "black or white, etc.) page between the elements if the shows differ greatly. But it is possible to string together multiple pte files into a single slideshow quite quickly this way and with a few "tweaks" make it work very well. Best regards, Lin

Let me refer you to this link: ---------------------- Ron, Please try this new test beta: http://www.wnsoft.com/test/pte500_b6_pre1.zip Unpack to a new folder and run apr.exe file Now slideshow will work when "Use music" unchecked. Thanks that your found this problem! p.s. please don't use it as main beta, because it's not fully ready. --------------------- Note the caveat about using it as "main beta" because it's not fully ready, but it may solve your immediate issue and not affect anything else. Suggest you install it in a separate folder pending more information from Igor..... Lin

Just a couple quick questions. First, did you set the 60 seconds for this slide in the Customize Slide Main tab? If not, you need to set it there. Second, if you did set it for 60 seconds and that shows on the timeline in the Objects and Animation view, do you have any background music presently set? If so, please remove the music and try running it again and see if it works properly then. I'll explain a bit later.... To exit from the Objects & Animations screen you indeed do use the "X" at the top right corner which should return you to the main window. Recently there have been some issues with background sound and display times in the Objects and Animations screen. Your issue "may" be associated with this which is being corrected as we speak. If removing the music "fixes" the problem, then we can go from there. If it doesn't then it might be a good idea for you to use the "File" "Create Backup in Zip" and post a link so we can see what's going on and help correct the problem. best regards, Lin

Hi Robert, Yes, many years ago before there was an official trail of any kind - it was not and easy climb and I can appreciate what you went through - beautiful area though and the view of the valley is outstanding by night. It looks amazingly green now - much more so than when I made that climb. I missed your Lone Peak show but will go back and have a look. Best regards, Lin

LOL - yes, I can imagine what the animators must go through to produce the beautiful movie effect on major motion picture animations..... Thanks very much that does work well! best regards, Lin

Hi Igor, Yes, I had to make the values different on the second lap to prevent the problem of the planet turning dark too late when it entered the influence of the sun and turning light too late when it left the sun. The reason I didn't duplicate the slide, but rather continued with the original slide in the animation window window with the second orbit (lap) was that the random effects of the sun's swirling hot gas suddenly "jump" back to the original start position with the start of the "repeat slide" which is a sudden unnatural look. Certainly duplicating the slide would be a much simpler approach to continuing animation, but probably will not work well with this type animation. Of course this type animation is getting far away from the true purpose of the program (slideshow presentation) and more into animation programming which it was really never intended. Thanks very much for checking this. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ron, Send me a link to the pte file and I'll look at it and see what you need to do. Best regards, Lin

I have the Sun with Venus orbiting in an elliptical orbit. The sun consists of several PNG's designed to create a swirling gas/flame effect by moving in opposite rotational directions and by "horizontal flip" of one of the PNG's. Venus consists of a Venus and "dark Venus" PNG. The dark Venus PNG is in a child relationship to the regular Venus and exists to create the "silhouette" effect when Venus crosses the image of the Sun on the side facing the viewer. For the first orbit, everything worked exactly as expected. I adjusted the dark Venus to zero opacity at the start and put a place holder zero opacity just before Venus crossed the Sun on the first orbit and a 100% (some interim steps omitted for clarity) when it was over the sun. As Venus leaves the sun the Opacity was changed back to Zero (in increments) and everything works perfectly! The problem became apparent on the second orbit. When I essentially duplicated the procedure for the first orbit, Venus turned dark way too soon. After tinkering with it for about a half hour I finally did an iterative solution by making dark Venus zero until well into the Sun and didn't change the opacity back to zero until it was well out of the influence of the Sun. If you move the blue arrow manually through the second orbit you will see what I mean. However, the actual preview doesn't match the manual simulation. The actual Preview looks correct now, but to make it look correct I had to "fudge" quite a bit. Perhaps this has to do with insertion of a keypoint and then subsequently changing the time and may be solved by something I suggested earlier about the possibility of "linearity" of effects in terns of pan,zoom, etc., being optional or fixed via a "switch" check box - I don't know for certain, but if anyone wants to run the pte simulation, just click and hold on the blue arrow and run through the second orbit with the view set to about 150% so you can see what the manual movement reveals versus what happens with the Preview. So the issue is that it appears that the timing shifts so that the effect lags behind it's actual programmed time as the show progresses. What you see with moving the arrow along the time line is not what you get with the Preview. Tis a mystery - LOL http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/venus.zip Best regards, Lin

Do you mean moving the "keypoints" furher apart rather than "transition points?" The keypoints on the time line control when things happen and for how long so to make the text scroll slower you want to extend the space or (time) between when the text begins to scroll and when it leaves the screen. Of course if you make the scroll begin further down off the monitor and end further up off the monitor you are making it travel further in the same period of time so it will necessarily move "faster". Best regards, Lin

Hi Marian, Project Options, Comments Tab, Put check mark beside "Set Comments for all Slides To" then use the down arrow to select Picture Name. Lin

Much of the confusion comes about because when Photoshop was invented, the MacIntosh B&W displays and Mac's ruled desktop publishing. Adobe adapted the then pixel pitch of 72 pixels per inch used on the old monitors and made the error of calling it 72dpi which is a printer's term. Commonly newer color monitors display something in the order of 96 pixels per inch and above and the confusion has been rampant ever since. They also make the mistake of referring to it as "resolution" which is another misnomer. When we deal with scanning, we want an image which has a decent pixel count. The pixel count is determined by the scanning resolution and typically, for screen display we want something equal or larger than our highest screen resolution so we can resample to suit whichever display we use. For printing we want to match the input resolution of the printer engine which for commercial purposes is usually 300dpi, but we want 300 at the SIZE we intend to print unless we want interpolation. But since the majority of users today have digital capture devices, we start with whatever the capture provides in terms of pixel count. Many, if not all the older digital cameras simply adopted 72 (dpi) as a standard EXIF tag. Canon decided to make it 180 (dpi) and does so on many of their newer cameras. As the article points out - (but keep in mind that this stems from a scanning perspective) the dpi number simply describes the size of a print at a given pixel density. If you make the print smaller, then the same number of pixels are placed in a smaller geographical area making the (dpi) print density greater. If you print larger then those same pixels are spread out. The display on any monitor has a pre-set density into which these files must be displayed to they are either upsampled or downsampled if you elect to fill the screen (assuming aspect ratio compatibility). Other wise you must use a program like Photoshop to pan about to see the entire image. A projector doesn't give a hoot about pixel density information in the EXIF file. It doesn't matter one iota whether the density is 72 dpi or 1000 dpi to the projector, it only cares how many pixels make up the matrix. You get the best results when the projector doesn't need to resample so do it in Photoshop, etc., to match the projector output before feeding it the file and everything will be a good as it can be assuming compatibility with colorspace, etc. Best regards, Lin

But not yet "to old to cut the mustard" LOL - looks like some tired ol' boys but the fishing and scenery made it all worth while. Great job to get some beautiful frames and memories. I can almost taste those fish! Isn't that in the Cottonwood area? If so, isn't that a bit over a 4,000 ft altitude increase in a bit less than four miles? Bet you had some sore muscles the next day or so? LOL... Best regards, Lin

What brought this to my attention was a timing issue I seem to be having which I have not been able to figure out yet. I have the Sun with Venus orbiting in an elliptical orbit. The sun consists of several PNG's designed to create a swirling gas/flame effect by moving in opposite rotational directions and by "horizontal flip" of one of the PNG's. Venus consists of a Venus and "dark Venus" PNG. The dark Venus PNG is in a child relationship to the regular Venus and exists to create the "silhouette" effect when Venus crosses the image of the Sun on the side facing the viewer. For the first orbit, everything worked exactly as expected. I adjusted the dark Venus to zero opacity at the start and put a place holder zero opacity just before Venus crossed the Sun on the first orbit and a 100% (some interim steps omitted for clarity) when it was over the sun. As Venus leaves the sun the Opacity was changed back to Zero (in increments) and everything works perfectly! The problem became apparent on the second orbit. When I essentially duplicated the procedure for the first orbit, Venus turned dark way too soon. After tinkering with it for about a half hour I finally did an iterative solution by making dark Venus zero until well into the Sun and didn't change the opacity back to zero until it was well out of the influence of the Sun. If you move the blue arrow manually through the second orbit you will see what I mean. However, the actual preview doesn't match the manual simulation. The actual Preview looks correct now, but to make it look correct I had to "fudge" quite a bit. Perhaps this has to do with insertion of a keypoint and then subsequently changing the time and may be solved by something I suggested earlier about the possibility of "linearity" of effects in terns of pan,zoom, etc., being optional or fixed via a "switch" check box - I don't know for certain, but if anyone wants to run the pte simulation, just click and hold on the blue arrow and run through the second orbit with the view set to about 150% so you can see what the manual movement reveals versus what happens with the Preview. Tis a mystery - LOL http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/venus.zip Best regards, Lin

LOL - It does indeed! I completely missed it - perhaps because it's labeled "Position". Shouldn't it correctly be labeled "Time?" That will teach me to be more observant!! Best regards, Lin

In a future version of P2E would it be possible to see the numbers represented by future keypoint positions without actually adding and clicking on a keypoint? What I mean is if you slide the little blue arrow across the time line, would if be possible to display the keypoint numbers in a window with the time numbers scrolling by so the user knows precisely what time is represented by a given position of the little blue arrow? If so, then watching the movement of an object on screen while sliding the arrow might help place the keypoint at a precise position represented by the object rather than trying to "guess" at what precise time to type into the keypoint block to make an event happen when the object is at a precise point. Something like Photoshop uses in the Info Window when you move the cursor across the screen and the XY coordinates are continuously updated, except for time rather than position? Thanks, Lin

Hi Derek, I created an new pte so as not to disturb your original. Here's the link. Yes, you want to add the original image and fade it in after you finish the assembly of the puzzle pieces to remove the line. My version is a bit different than what you probably had in mind, but you can get the idea by looking at the pte file. What you are forgetting is that when you set opacity to zero at the beginning then to 100%, etc., somewhere else along the time line, what you are asking the program to do is to gradually change from zero opacity to 100% opacity throughout the time from zero to the next keypoint. What you should do to maintain zero opacity until a particular time is put an intermediate keypoint where you want the change from zero to 100% opacity to begin. For example, if you want the piece to remain hidden for six seconds then begin to appear so it would appear at 8 seconds then you put another keypoint at 6 seconds with that set to zero opacity. The program will then keep that piece hidden because you have informed it that you want zero opacity at zero and zero opacity at six seconds. When six seconds passes the piece will begin to "materalize" and become 100% at 8 seconds. To make a longer fade it move the six second keypoint back toward zero to maybe 5 seconds. See how that works? So you have it going well. Next place your original image in the front position (use Order, Bring to Front. Set the opacity to zero. Go to 13 or 14 seconds or so and put another keypoint set to zero then at 15 seconds or whatever make it 100% opaque. Here's the link: http://www.lin-evans.net/drury/drury.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Andreas, Why can't you copy the dll file from one to the other pc? A dynamic link library file is like any other in that it can easily be copied to a CD or DVD or floppy disk then copied to another computer into the Windows/system32 folder. If you can't "see" the file you need to change the Windows parameters in control panel to make hidden and system files visible to explorer. Best regards, Lin

Hi Drury, Let's start with the last question first. Project Options, "Main" tab, then you have the choice of repeating the show or ending the show after the last slide. You can also have the last slide remain on screen at the end of the show (the user then presses ESC to leave and go back to the Windows Desktop). These features have been enabled since beta 4 so no reason not to stop a show at the end if you want it that way. Now let's look at the X - Y axis. When you choose to zoom you can make the image larger by either dragging the corner of it's rectangle, placing a different number inside the "Zoom" box in the Objects and Animations screen on the "Animations" tab or you can select the object by clicking on its name in the object list and hold down the up or down arrow key next to the zoom box which will increment the numbers up or down. Notice that when you do this you will see the object get larger or smaller proportionally. But what if you wanted to distort the object so it got larger or smaller on the vertical axis but not on the horizontal axis or vice versa? Then you click on the tiny box between the horizontal and vertical zoom. When you do this the appearance of the box changes slightly and then when you increment the numbers larger or smaller with either the horizontal or vertical zoom arrows, instead of the image getting larger or smaller proportionally, the object becomes distorted on either the horizontal or vertical axis (X or Y axis). This allows you to perform adjustments for a variety of conditions as well as create effects such as "flipping the Morgan Dollar". The effect of rotating the dollar was done aa an illusion by changing the amount of width while leaving the height constant until only a thin line exists, then substituting the opposite side of the coin already "squeezed" to a vertical line and gradually, over time, expanding it back to normal size on the reverse. The visual effect is somewhat as you would see when you "rotate" a coin standing on its edge. An optical illusion. That's what the tiny box between the Horizontal and Vertical zoom is for - to change from a linear expansion and contraction of the image to allow independent manipulation of the horizontal or vertical size. As for the "Preview" not looking exactly as you see when actually changing the numbers, try dragging the keypoint at 15 seconds over into the white on the right side until it will stay and see what happens. My guess is that you are not quite at the end of the action when 15 seconds rolls around. If you zip up the pte file and images you are using and post a link I'll make it work right and then you can see what the changes were. Use the "File" "Create a Backup Zip" to automatically zip up everything then post a link to that file. Best regards, Lin