Lin Evans

Hi Al, There is an excellent "work-around" for this. Rather than place the images in the slidelist, just put them all to the main image as separate layers and adjust the timing between each via the time line. I've been able to get extremely fast sequences - as fast as the system resources will allow - this way. I would think for a time-lapse sequence such as he is trying to achieve that this would work very well within limits.... Lin

LOL - cool FX Richard - looks like it's going to take some blokes to rappel down next to rescue that pesky briefcase! Lin

Hi Ken, I'm not surprised, some of the images are as large as 4606x3372 so it does take a toll on resources. It actually runs smoothly on my wife's cheap little Dell notebook which barfed all over my first puzzle image with full sized PNG pieces and 32 layers so it "probably" will run smoothly on most newer systems. The majority of my clients whom I make presentations for are art gallery owners or art buyers who have the latest and greatest in equipment so I think it will work out for them even with the really large files. I'm still experimenting to see what the limits are and to find a good compromise where I can get smoothness and still be able to zoom in tightly for detail. The "shimmer," I'm afraid is going to be unavoidable. Even if I really dull the sharpness of the image, I still get a good bit of this in zooms and rotates. It's just the normal aliasing from having a combination of phosphor persistence on a CRT or trail-smear on an LCD monitor plus multiple slightly different views of tiny detail differences between frames at about 30 fps. On woodlands, flowers, most architecture, etc., it probably won't be an issue but for jewelry or shiny, multi-faceted surfaces, I'm afraid it's going to be something we just have to live with. In all the quality of image is "sooooo" much better than anything I've ever been able to do with ProShow Gold or Producer or even Vegas Video I'm elated. This new graphical engine allows some fantastic possibilities for my business. There are some work-arounds. You noticed that on the Acoma pottery with the two little bears I elected to use two separate close-up frames with no zoom. Those intricate designs are hand painted with a Yucca leaf! They are so close together that any zoom or movement causes extreme "shimmer" so sometimes it's necessary to change the "style" of presentation and use the zoom, pan, rotate where it works best and avoid it in other places. Thanks for watching and reporting back! Best regards, Lin

At least one person has mentioned that they couldn't make a complete and real slideshow yet with the beta, but I've not really had any difficulty doing that. I've linked to a sample below. It's about a 40 meg download, so only suggested for those with broadband internet connect. It's not a "long" show, but uses very high resolution art images to get closeups with lots of detail. It's probably not the best slideshow I've ever done, but it demonstrates some of the possibilities with version 5. Link to zipped executable below: http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/heavenlyart.zip Lin

Hi Tony, Actually, many are doing both. There is no reason anyone can't make a complete slideshow with p2e 5.0 beta 3. I have made a number of them. The things which are "missing" such as a number of transitions, the ability to output an AVI, complete auto-sync of sound, etc., are not "deal killers" in the least and having a number of fancy transitions is not necessarily an adjunct for a slideshow with the Ken Burns Effects. Most of my slideshows make with ProShow Gold use nothing but fades between slides because there is plenty "movement" within the shows themselves. But there are many who will take their time learning version 5 and a few who may never use the new features. The nice thing is that they are there "if" and "when" you need them. Best regards, Lin

Probably not in the immediate future, at least not for version 5.0. This would require including an audio editor engine which would make the code size considerably larger. P2E has always been "streamlined" in terms of code overhead. Programs such as ProShow Gold and Producer which have incorporated both rudimentary audio processing and DVD burn engines have been plagued with "bugs" and system component incompatibilities which drive some users up the wall. Fortunately P2E has been relatively bug free and having smaller and tighter code makes it easier to keep things running smoothly. Having audio fade-out capabilities would be really convenient, but since there are a number of great and basically "free" audio editors readily available (such as Audacity), it's not been a priority. I've found that I can get by really well by using outside editors for sound tracks and though I would like to see such a feature, I think only Igor and the development team can make such a decision. So far there has been no hint that this will be included in future versions, but only time will tell. Best regards, Lin

That would be: support@wnsoft.com Best regards, Lin

Normally you would receive your unlock key almost immediately. Do you have some type of "spam" blocking at your ISP? The reason I ask is that the key is generally delivered as a text attachment to an email. In some cases your provider's email server may block what it incorrectly believes to be spam or a potentially dangerous file attachment and you may not see it or know that it was sent. You may want to email and ask for a zipped unlock key rather than the normal text attachment. In the majority of cases the text attachment works fine but in some cases (perhaps yours) one's email server makes unwarranted decisions and either blocks the email completely or corrupts the attachment (it happened to me). I know Igor and the developers have been very busy with working on version 5 and there has been greatly increased activity in the past couple of weeks so they may be slower than normal responding to emails, but they will indeed get back to you. Meanwhile you might contact your provider and ask them to temporarily turn off any blocking which may be affecting your email reception because any bounced emails will automatically be resent for a period of time. Best regards, Lin

LOL - you've got to stop by the forum more often! Actually, P2E has always had the ability to use two audio tracks. You have the first as a "background" then you have the ability to add voiceover, other music, whatever by adding it to a slide. It can transcend slides, that is continue from one to the next so you could have a running narration over the course of a slideshow by starting with slide one and just continuing with the voice-over, etc. Pan, zoom, rotate, scroll are already incorporated in the beta available for download here from the forum. The rotation is much more sophisticated than ProShow or Producer. You have the ability to not only rotate the entire frame on a center point, but the ability to move the center so the rotation can result in a "circular" motion of the entire frame. You also have levels like Producer only with much more power than Producer. You can have indepedent animation of any object or "objects" on each level simultaneously which allows three dimensional effects. You can also independently adjust "opacity" or transparency for "any" object be it jpg, png, tiff, etc., something which can't be done in Producer. Run this little slideshow created in version 5 Beta 1 to see over 30 levels in motion simultaneously: zipped executable: http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/puzzlesmallRAM.zip Lin

Hi John, Thanks - sorry it took me so long to get back - I've been having problems with my broadband again but all seems fixed now. It's been fun working on this one - hopefully Noel will be able to figure a way to get a star diffraction action for the transparency which is easy enough to make it useful for those not PhotoShop gurus. I think a couple major stars with the diffraction pattern might look nie. The explosion I'm trying to simulate is an exploding supernova in space so no sound. The images I'm using are actual captures from an exploding supernova - astronomers have finally learned how to accurately predict the times and have been able to get real photos. My problem is how to sequence and time them for s somewhat realistic effect - of course that may be more than is possible right now, but I'm still playing with it. If I get something which works well I'll carefully document it to save others some time. Beta 3 is great and the new features are very welcome! Congrats to Igor and the team for the new feature set which seems to be working quite well. Best regards, Lin

Dom & Ron, Noel Carboni writes some terrific actions for PhotoShop, One of his action sets which sells for $19.95 U.S. is designed for astronomy photographers and among other things has an action which creates a Star Diffraction pattern (I'll link you to his site in a moment). The present action acts on photos of stars and can be used to create the "star" pattern you will see on his site, but it's actually designed to be used on a jpg or bmp or tiff, opaque file, though it can set in a "layer" above the file. To make it simple and useful for creating these diffraction patterns on a transparency "cut-out" it would need to be re-worked or modified a bit. I'm not sure if it's feasible or not to do it in a way which would be useful for those who are not really Photoshop proficient and so I asked him to look into it and see if it might be possible, providing enough people were interested to make it worth doing. Having the diffraction "look" does add significant appeal to a star field photo. Of course some of the other actions are very, very useful as well, but more for the astro-photographer than for the slideshow maker. He is looking into the feasibility and will get back to me when he has more information. Meanwhile, anyone who wants to see what this would look like just follow the link below. When you get to his site click on the PhotoShop Actions for sale link then look at the astronomy actions and find the Star Diffraction action to see what it looks like. http://home.att.net/~ncarboni/DigiPhoto.html Lin

Thanks guys, suggestions taken and acted on - text improved (I think) per Dom's idea and changing font's in one case and size and transparency. Added supernova "explosion" - anyone know how to make a good explosion?? This one is "O.K., but not great" .. Ken, thanks for the midi - it's from a newer iteration of StarTrek - they keep changing it over the years. Let me know if you come up with an ideal way to render an exploding supernova - HA! Changes reflected on original link... but link repeated here. http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/startrek.zip Lin

Hi Ken, Thanks for checking it. It's strange that the music volume is low - it's a Midi file so that may explain some things because Midi apparently isn't as uniform over all systems as mp3, etc. On all our systems the sound is fine in terms of volume so it could be something unique to your system and the midi file being used. Best regards, Lin

I made some subtle (O.K., maybe not so subtle) changes in the intensity, size, etc., of the stars and added the Starship Enterprise in the ending - It's still a work in process but let me know what you think. I have a friend who writes and sells some incredible PhotoShop actions and we are discussing whether feasible for him to make an action which will create star diffractions effects which could be used in creating transparencies for this type backdrop. He has an excellent astronomy background and already has actions which help greatly with deep space noise, localized contrast enhancement, etc., etc., but the question is whether anyone would be interested in an action which creates star diffraction patterns?? If anyone is interested, let me know and also what you think of the starfield effect? When I get it all ironed out I'll post the full p2e backup - right now it's still in process so this is only the zipped executable. http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/startrek.zip Lin

Hi John, As Dom said, you can just zoom small objects so you can deal with them easier. The one thing I think you could consider it just having your boat run up the "river" without any red line, etc. This way you can totally avoid having to make small PNG's and align them. I'm not sure whether you read my post and link while I was in San Francisco a couple days ago, but here's a link again so you can take a look It's just a real quick demonstration of a little boat going up the river and "under" text and a road, etc., without any red line, etc. If you don't use the red line, you can simply take your original map, duplicate it over a transparent layer then cut out the river but leave the bridges and any other objects you want to boat to go under. Then put the boat between the background and cut out and when it comes to anything on the cut-out layer which isn't "cut-out" it will pass behind or (under) the object. This avoids having to make and align small PNG's to mask the boat when it comes to a bridge, etc. http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/boatrip.zip Best regards, Lin

LOL - it's even worse because it's not a "vacation" but a working trip for my wife. We're in San Francisco (for the Dom) and I've just returned to the hotel from a 14 mile walk. The hills here are a real killer - HA! Fortunately I live at about 6,000 feet elevation and I'm used to long rugged trails at up to and over 14,000 feet so the walking part is easy for me but the humidity here has me wringing wet! I like the idea of separate bridge parts too, but aligning them might be tougher than just using a rectangle a layer under. Actually I "think" you can set different layer positions via the keypoints at different times on the same slide for separate objects - I'll try it and let you know, Dom. As I remember I did that on my "map" but I'll have to go back and look. I just tried it and you're right! It can't be done by moving the order of the object and changing it back on the timeline - on the same slide - too many variables to think about and I'm not thinking straight because I'm still thinking about all these cute girls on the streets of San Francisco- HA! Oh to be 20 years old again (well that was 44 years ago) My wife's going to kill me but heck, I'm just old, not dead - LOL. I don't have my desktop along on the trip so I can't remember how I made the red bar go under the road signs then re-appear but when I get home I'll check and see. As I remember it wasn't that difficult and I didn't make duplicate PNG's to set-on top and I don't remember having more than one red layer (of course it could be done that way with the "river" route). In other words one red layer would stop and another could appear right after the bridge but that's too complicated too. --------------------------- Oh duhhh, I just remembered how I did it, I didn't cut out the road when it came to the road signs, I just left it opaque at that point without the transparency showing through. That solves the red line going under the bridge but does nothing for the boat but if the boat is on another layer just above the red line instead of on the same layer - hmmmm. Then there is why the red line at all and why not just the boat. So if the cut out were exactly the contours of the river then the top layer would look just like the river with the boat traveling down the river rather than in front of a red lline wouldn't that look better?? here's what I had in mind. This one has the boat going down the transparency and under the lettering and "bridge" (road) by carefully not cutting out the bridge and writing on the transparency. No red line though..... http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/boatrip.zip Best regards, Lin

Hey Guys, I have "Y-Fi" In my hotel room!! I didn't think I would be able to get on the web - but "Yippie" - HA! My wife is not too happy about it but...... Actually there are two other ways to deal with the boat passing under the bridge. You don't need to "bring Mohammed to the Mountain" (American interpretation of scriptural saying to say you are working too hard) you can simply change the boat's opacity by setting a 100% opacity keypoint just before the bridge on the timeline, then an instant later another to make it zero opacity to make the boat disappear as it passes "under the bridge" then repeat the operation in the opposite direction to make it re-appear when it comes out from under the bridge. I think you could do the same by just setting a keypoint right before the boat would pass under the bridge and moving the boat by using the Object - send to back" , etc., then another keypoint at the time it would re-appear with "bring to front" Of course it would be more "elegant" if you had the bridges as little PNG's so it would "disappear" in real time from front to back (the bow would dissapear before the stern". But couldn't you also get this same effect easier by just making a small black rectangle in an underlying layer at the bridge then move the boat to a layer just beneath so it was visible until it hit this layer then would disappear for the duration of the black rectangle? Just some thoughts..... Wife - calling - bye for now LOL Lin

I'll be out of state for the next week - so see you all next Sunday.... Lin

Beautiful show, Jean-Pierre. Excellent example of how p2e can be used with innovative techniques to produce both pleasing aesthetics and amazing transitions! Best regards, Lin

Hi Kelly, Just download the regular version from the main page but don't take the defaults - put it in a different folder and simply run either version. The release of Version 5 will have all the bells and whistles that the original had plus all the new features, but the beta version is simplified for debugging. Again, just download and install the regular from the main site (not the forum) and install it in a different folder, or just install it as the default and download the beta again and install it in a different folder. It' O.K. to have both on your computer and your registration key will automatically allow each to work, but they just need to be physically separated in different install folders. Lin

Hi Michel, Click the link again, it's been modified so all files are contained including new executable.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Michel, True! Yes, but I've not really finished it so am waiting until I finish the Star Ship Enterprise addition then I will post all... Been gone most of the day so haven't had a chance to finish it yet. Best regards, Lin

LOL - It's an American expression meaning "I couldn't help myself" - "I had to do it" - No, each star is part of a single object. All will be revealed soon, I'm still working on putting in the Star Ship Enterprise. But here's a start: The starfield is composed of a blue/black layer overlaid on a transparency. The blue black layer has many "holes" from 1 to 5 pixels or so through which the transparency is revealed. The twinkle and "shine" comes from a white layer between which is constructed in PhotoShop using the Sponge tool to varigate the white with black "sponge-like" pattern. This layer is made larger than the screen and rotated (in this case about 160 degrees) during the length of the display. This varigated "sponge-like" layer also has a bit of red and yellow splotches. The line represents a "meteorite" and consists of a transparent "line" (not a very good one though) with a small rectangel of the same color as the starfield masking it and revealing it. Lin

http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/startest.zip New link above has all files - pte, png, jpg, etc. including new executable..... Brief explanation: Starfield background made by creating transparent layer and overlaying (paste in PhotoShop) a blue/black jpg. The eraser tool was then used with 1, 3, 5 pixel size circles to create starfield cutouts and a "line" to represent a meteorite. This was saved as a PNG so that the transparent part is the star cut-outs. A white jpg square was then created and the "Filter effect" Sponge was used to create a ramdomized sponge-like appearance with dark and light areas. Some red and yellow "splashes" were added and this was inserted behind the starfield PNG. This variagated backdrop is then rotated 160 degrees during the show to provide the star "twinkle" as the "holes" variously reveal dark or white or red or yellow depending on their positions. The "Big Dipper" stars were surrounded by a splash of blue to set them off. A photo of Haley's Comet was made into a PNG and moved across the field and the Starship Enterprise was constructed from two images - one modified to make a third which has red rather than yellow orange on the tail "exhaust" A photo of Orion Nebula was made into a PNG and added along with a midi-Startrek intro. Just fooling around guys..... Lin Lin

Hi Al, For many years I used medium and large format platforms for this but I've switched to all digital. I have an older Kodak MF back (16 megapixel) but I honestly get just as good results with a variety of medium resolution digital SLR's and a couple fixed lens digicams. For this particular type photo I use either an 11 megapixel Canon EOS-1DS, my 10 megapixel Sony R1 (fixed lens APS sensor), or my Sigma SD10 (10.3 megapixel sensor but only a 3.4 megapixel file). The Sigma with a Foveon X3 processor actually gives me incredible pixel sharpness and I routinely make poster sized prints on my Epson 9600 from it. The Sony R1 is an incredible little camera for this type work with plenty of resolution and a really nice Zeiss designed lens. For extreme macro work I use the Canon 1DS with either a Canon F2.8 100mm macro lens or one of several Sigma lenses. Stitching can indeed multiply the resolution and is a great way to get medium or large format quality from a 35mm digital. One of my web friends Max Lyons actually stitched 196 frames made with his six megapixel Canon D60 into a single seamless 1.09 gigapixel two gigabyte image made at Bryce Canyon. He had it printed in sections on a LightJet and displayed an 8x12 foot print at PMA in Las Vegas three years ago. At the time it was the first gigapixel image ever made with a 35mm platform digital camera. The results were stunning and much higher in resolution than any 8x10 LF negative scan. He actually had to write his own software to handle it because PhotoShop barfed trying to process it - LOL. I spent an hour or so at PMA examining the print and I've never seen such detail. It even trumps the fantastic BetterLight scanning prints Stephen Johnson gets. Peter Grote was also there at PMA and I spent about a half hour discussing the BetterLight with him. He had a beautiful 43 inch by 17 foot panorama printed on an Epson 9600 which he had taken in Nepal in the Annapurna's. It was fantastic, but I really think Max Lyon's print was cleaner and showed more detail. So indeed stitching works well as long as the subject is amenable. Actually the same goes for scanning backs. If the clouds are blowing, the leaves are moving, etc., there are "issues" but when conditions are right these methods are truly great. Best regards, Lin