Lin Evans

It would require two versions of the exe show, one for XP and another for Vista forward.... It could get complicated. Fortunately, not too many people actually make shows which use this type of animation. Best regards, Lin

Judy, you can do that with Photoshop. Import frames to layers. "File" "Import" "Video Frames to Layers" Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, Yes, I was just trying to sort out exactly what you wanted to do. I have never used the grid feature myself for correcting horizontal or vertical orientation on a photo even though that's one of the two ways possible with Photoshop. Drawing a line for example, across the top of a roof structure then the Photoshop "rotate canvas, arbitrary" gives a pretty good quick and easy way to make that line parallel to the horizon. I'm assuming that was what you were referring to. Of course the accuracy is no more precise than the line drawn by the user but it's certainly good enough to approximate horizontal (or vertical). How precise sort of depends on the visual acuity and manual dexterity of the hand holding the mouse or pointing device. I agree that the slider in PTE is a pain to use because the motion is way too abrupt, at least for the way most have their mouse set up. I usually do my horizon corrections in my cameras so rarely have to deal with correcting a photo in PTE but I can see the utility of a control for quick straightening without manually entering values. In PTE I almost never us the slider or enter the numeric values but rather just grab the rotate point and do it visually with the mouse. I always work with a much smaller than full screen so that the entire bounding rectangle is visible at all times. There are lots of controls which could be useful in PixBuilder for image editing, but then one has to decide where to draw the line on image editing versus other features more germane to slideshow presentation. It's not easy sometimes deciding what is essential and what is excess... Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, Could you possibly explain a bit more. What is the purpose for the image rotate? Are you trying to correct for a horizon mistake? The rotate right now is precise to the nearest 1/1000th of a degree, I doubt if more "accuracy" is feasible??? Do you mean draw a line from point A to point B and have the program set that line and the image it's drawn on to 180" or 90" image as "horizontal" or "vertical" to compensate for out of horizontal or vertical capture? Sorry, I'm just not 100% clear on what the purpose is... Best regards, Lin

Hi Mur, If you want an eazy way to make precision splits up to 100 per image, I would suggest downloading the freeware Photoscape. This is a very useful software and splitting into rows or colums (ribbons) or both is extremely easy, quick and precise with it. Here's a link: http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/index.php Best regards, Lin P.S. I have a little tutorial on using it for splitting here: It's number 21... http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?/topic/7901-pte-made-easy-tutorials-continuously-updated/

Hi Mur, Actually, if you have Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, Panos has just released a really super nice free page curl action which you can use to "curl" all four corners or any of the four of a photo. See it here: http://www.panosfx.com/free-photoshop-actions/page-curls I use this one myself... Best regards, Lin

Hi Mur, My internet is down - has been for over 5 hours so I'm at a wifi connect in a town nearby. The "easiest" way to get a page curl for a slide is to use a screen capture tool and run the slide transition and capture the image. Save the image with the curl then you can play it (them) back as desired. There really is no way with the present animation capabilities of PTE to create a page curl in O&A so not really feasible to try to create a style. On the other hand it's really easy to capture one from the transition. Just set a reasonably long transition time, adjust the parameters as you like for the curl and capture it at your highest screen resolution. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mur, PTE doesn't have a "style" yet which creates a page curl for a slide, but you could create one yourself if you wished. Until then, I would suggest PanosFX at http://www.panosfx.com which has a free photoshop/elements action which can create one for any image. Best regards, Lin

Very nice images and post processing and the result is testimony to the grandeur that was...... Probably many young women received a great education inside those walls. Nature has a way of reclaiming what was hers though, so in the end once deterioration has advanced to that degree, there is no turning back the clock! Best regards, Lin

Thank's very much Dan! Cimarron, Colorado is a beautiful little place right on the Morrow Point Reservoir. I can see why she would love it being that near the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. A few years ago I was there in winter and wading waist deep snow got the image posted below of a beautiful buck deer. I really appreciate the translation - I was having a bit of a problem trying to do it with Google but it is all clear now! Wonderful story! From the type of ranching (sheep) and the love you have for the mountains, I assume your ancestry is Basque? I fully understand living in a tent - my late wife and I lived in a tent for six months when we first moved to Colorado to attend college. Later for many years we lived in small travel trailers and enjoyed the nomadic life. When we lived in California many, many years ago we always loved going to a Basque restaurant in Bakersfield where there is a fairly large population of Basque people. They had a huge table where everyone sat and passed the food just like a family might do on holidays. It was a great experience and a great way to meet new people! Best regards, Lin

Hi Dan, Loved "Anna" and the many great shots and historical facts. I assume Gabriel was related to you and then Anna as well by marriage? The Montrose area of Colorado is a beautiful place and I'm sure Anna was very happy there - sad that Gabriel passed away at such a young age though, pneumonia took many in those days... I understand Anna remarried and eventually sold the ranch and lived to 89 years... Best regards, Lin

Beautiful show on la vallée du Rio Cochamó, accès secret à la Cordillère Dan, it makes me want to visit that part of Chili! I'll be looking at your other shows - thanks very much for the link! Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, It could be a possibility for a future version of PTE. The present way of doing it isn't intuitive, but to make it intuitive might make it much less versatile. Right now as you know, the video can run uninterrupted as the still slides progress (master video) or it can be a single video clip either below or above the layer of the still slide. As you also probably know, the sound can be muted on the video and inserted as the audio and played as an mp3 audio with complete envelope control right now - it's a PTE feature. All the instructions for doing this and more are in the Wiki user guide, but right now it's not available in as many languages as would be nice. The reason I posted the response and method for using a video as a background was that I wasn't certain if the OP realized that this could presently be done. When one has to translate every thread, it can be difficult to avoid missing important information. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Any browser can play a file directly from your hard drive. The file doesn't have to reside elsewhere nor does it have to be housed on a "website." As long as the html code has been generated and stored whether on your own hard disk or on a server drive somewhere across the world, the browser only needs to be pointed at the html file to play the selection. For example, when building a web site, generally programmers will test it on their own machine before uploading it to a host. As an example, just open Mozilla and click on "File" (upper left) then "Open File." and you will immediately be able to browse your entire hard disk or attached media types. If you have generated the proper html code, then clicking on the calling file (often index.htm) you can run that content regardless of whether it's located on your own system or on some other system anywhere on the internet. In the present case, the 60 fps video being tested with the browsers resides on my own hard disk in a folder so there is no "internet" involved nor is there any download, etc., it's just being played locally by the browser. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, I can't verify the html call - it's the default from my Xara Web Developer and it's entirely possible it's Flash protocol. We will know more when YouTube gets its act together. Right now lots of people in the HTML5 beta group are having problems so there is apparently a ways to go before it's working properly. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, There is no "site" - it's being played directly from my hard drive via my browsers. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, It's not the fps which appears to be the problem and in order to simulate the true browser response, you really need to play it via the html link. If you like, I'll send you a video with animation which challenges the browser but plays perfectly with the player. It just won't play smoothly via any of the browsers I have (chrome, IE or Mozilla) when called via the html. I've tried it with both my XP system with a pretty powerful video card (GTX 750Ti with 2 gig RAM) and with my super powerful Win 8.1 system (very strong i7 4770 3.4 gh 8 cpu's and 32 gig RAM with 3 gig Video Ram on an nVidia GTX 760) with identical responses. Plays perfectly in the player, but when called vial the html using the browser. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, It will be some time before they get it done. You can join their HTML5 beta but from all the comments I'm getting it's just not working well yet. There is still a problem with browsers which prevents 60 fps from proper playback. Even when I output an excellent and extremely smooth 60 fps video on my own hard disk and call it with a browser, it's not all that great. If I play the identical video with a good player, it plays perfectly, but when it's called from html, even though the browsers are playing the same video from the same folder on the hard disk which plays perfectly with any of the decent players, it's not satisfactory with the browser. I'm afraid we are in for a bit of a wait before video played over the web catches up with what can be done via players on our systems. I've tried IE, Mozilla and Chrome. Perhaps Safari is different, maybe you can try it yourself. If you have a web generation program such as DreamWeaver or Xara Web Designer which can output the code for the web to your hard drive, give it a try. That's what I did with the video I ended uploading to DailyMotion. AFAIK DailyMotion is the only current host supporting 60 fps video. Best regards, Lin

Thanks! It appears that probably because he used the albumen printing paper proscess, the results were as they came from the neagative. Since most all the work was generally done in the field, it's doubtful that he had any equipment to crop other than physically cutting the paper. I'm just guessing at this. I'm not certain if anyone really knows the complete answer. The glass negatives were quite fragile and what amazes me is how they were successfully transported the thousands of miles back from the frontier. Best regards, Lin

Hi and welcome to the PTE forum! You can add a video as a background now, but not via the project options. Go to the first slide where you want the video to begin as a backgrouns and in Objects and Animations add this video slide, position it on the layer under the still slide, select it, and on the "properties tab" make it the "master video track." Now copy it (right click and choose copy) and paste it to each successive slide. Position it under the still slide and It will automatically be "linked" to the master slide on subsequent slides where it is copied and pasted. If you don't want the sound from the video, turn it off via the mute on the master slide. When you play your show, the video will run continuously and uninterrupted in the background. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mick, Jean, Robert, Thanks very much for your comments! Timothy's story is fascinating. He used a wet plate process with cameras up to 20x24 inches in size. Glass plates had to be prepared immediately before and processed immediately after snapping the shutter. All the equpment and chemicals had to be packed, unpacked, packed and hauled over mountains, deserts, down and up rivers, etc., over and again. Glass plate negatives were coated with chemicals to make them sensitive to light. The chemicals had to be wet at the time of the exposure. This meant a portable darkroom for travel. Timothy adapted a war ambulance and he would treat the glass plate negative, rush out to the camera, expose it and rush back to the wagon to develop it before it dried. The exposure time, compared to modern cameras, was quite long. Sometimes as much as thirty seconds was necessary and for the period of exposure time subjects had to remain perfectly still or the results would be blurred or have multiple images. When one stops to think about all the issues, it seems nothing short of miraculous that the photographers produced the amazing results they did in those early years. Mick, I had to decide whether to have a space around the images or pan - it is always difficult to decide because some detail is lost in smaller sizes which result from trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The 16:9 aspect ratio popular on contemporary displays doesn't fit well with the old aspect ratios in the 1800's which sometimes were more square than anything else. Even our modern dSLR's usually default to 3:2 or in the case of Olympus 4/3rds systems to 4:3 with mostly only consumer level digita cameras and cell phone cameras offering 16:9. It's either crop or have space around or pan in most cases. It got even more complicated for Civil War era photos when stereoscopic images were also common. Many of the old photos are badly scratched and must be restored. A mixture of sepia and black and white is common and it was also problematic to decide to convert the beautiful sepia toned prints to black and white. In the process of making this little presentation, I also found it difficult to decide whether to add audio descriptions or to have text descriptions for each slide. The text would hide some of the photo, but make it easier for non English speaking forum members to translate. I also gained a great deal of appreciation for those who frequently do audio voice-overs - it's not simple to coordinate and organize so that each slide has the proper identification. I commend all of you who have been doing this for years - it's not easy! Jean, yes when I think of the lives lost and all the destruction from wars it is very sad. In our Civil War there were nearly more American lives lost than in all other wars from WWI to the present day. Nearly ten percent of the population of the United States at the time of the Civil War were killed or died directly as a result of the war. More human lives were lost while incarcerated during the Civil War than we lost in Vietnam. I try not to have too many photos of the death and destruction when I make a show like this, it's just too depressing. Robert, I'm off to have a look at your show now! I just watched it! Fantastic images - the color is absolutely perfect and most modern camera manufacturers would love it if they could produce the same color perfection as in those 75 year old photos... Best regards, Lin

Nice job Denis! I had to look twice to realize that you landed that jet yourself at the beginning of the show! I first thought it was a video!! LOL. Beautiful photography of a magical place. I loved the sequence of the calving of the glacier. Was that the west coast or the east coast? I assumed the west because of Perito Moreno. Best regards, Lin

A photographer not usually known to the public, perhaps because he died at the age of 42 from tuberculosis, but nontheless responsible for some of the most poignant and impressive photos of the American Civil War and probably the first ethnographic photographer in America. He died in 1882, fifteen years before Edward S. Curtiss took his first photograph of a Native American Indian. O'Sullivan covered the Civil War then went west employed with the US Geological Survey survey team with the intent of photographing the west to make it attractive to settlers. His work was a favorite of Ansel Adams. This is a brief introduction to his body of work. I converted his sepia tone photos to black and white for consistency. Timothy travelled the west in a mule drawn wagon which served both as his home and his photographic laboratory. Considering the hardships he endured, his photographs are absolutely amazing in so many ways. http://www.lin-evans.org/pte/thosullivan.zip (windows zipped exe - about 68 meg) http://www.lin-evans.org/pte/thosullivanmac.zip (native MacIntosh exe - about 68 meg) Best regards, Lin

One thing of note - playback over a browser is never as smooth as direct playback with a player on your hard disk. Even when I upload a beautifully smooth 60fps video to my own server and play it back fully buffered via any of my browsers (Chrome, Mozilla, IE), it's not nearly as good and smooth as when I play it from my hard disk with a good media player. Why? Either something gets dropped in the upload download chain or the browser itself causes an issue. My money is on the browser causing the problem. If this is the case, then even when YouTube gets the wrinkles ironed out, our 60 fps perfectly smooth videos with animations won't look nearly as good when played on-line as they do when played from our hard-disks with a player. For example, I create a beautifully smooth 60fps video and use the Kantaris player to play it back on my system. Beautiful! It's perfectly smooth and absolutely zero jerk. Then I import it into Xara Web Designer and output a web page complete with all html code to my hard drive. I then use Mozilla Firefox to "play" the html directly from the hard disk and the 60fps beautifully smooth video is no longer perfectly smooth. I go into the file where Xara calls the video and play the mp4 directly from there with Kantaris - result? Perfectly smooth. So there is some issue created by the browsers themselves which prevent perfectly smooth playback of 60fps videos. Until that issue is resolved, our animated videos will never look as good on-line as they do played directly on our systems with a player. Best regards, Lin

Hi Frans, Thanks! I'll see if I can get one done this week and post a link to it on both the PTE forum and on the Facebook Group... Best regards, Lin