Lin Evans

Hi Paul, The "for the internet" is a tiny bit misleading because some might think that it would be a file which could be viewed much as a video from one's website. What lead to this was the fear of downloading executable code which "could" be possibly hiding a virus, trojan or other malware. Though this has never been the case with any PTE executable which is well protected by the developers, to avoid the issue of anti-virus software creating false positives with PTE executable code, the developers decided to offer the choice of the regular exe file with everything included in the single file, or an executable portion which was digitally signed plus a data file. By being digitally signed, antivirus software will always accept the code just as they do executable code from Microsoft, Adobe or any other major company. So this zipped file is to be hosted on your own or any site and downloaded by the user. The user then simply extracts the two archived files to a folder of their choice and mouse clicks the exe file name and the program runs just as a single exe file would. The difference being the protection of having a digitally signed exe file. The latest operating systems will still give the user a warning, but anti-virus software, because of the digital signature, will not miscategorize the file as a virus. Best regards, Lin

Hi Paul, Another way to "skin a cat" - LOL Sounds logical to me and would love to see the results! Best regards, Lin

Hi Paul, Let us know how it works for you... by the way, I posted one more sequence to my demo on the other link. It's a summer boat and ocean scene with rippling water and a couple extras for fun... It's now updated on the original link... Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, I suspected that might be the case. The device you ordered functions as the analog to digital converter and should do the job nicely. Best regards, Lin

Hi Paul, If you could download from my link the AVI tutorial/explanation it will help you with understanding the procedure. Essentially what was done is to crop the area created by the mask, paint over the rocks, ice and objects within that area with the same iridescent colors adjacent to these objects then create the ripples by using SqirlzReflect. With no geographical objects (shore line, rocks, ice, etc.) to reflect, the program will simply use the entire area. Once that is done the animated gif created (I used the animated gif rather than an AVI because it's smaller, quicker and just as good and it will repeat for any length of time) will be revealed by the mask created in Photoshop which confines the ripples only to the pure white areas which constitute the mask itself. In addition, because it's too time consuming to diddle with the reflect program to get just the perfect amount of "ripple," the original jpg was used in the layer above the mask as well as below the mask. The image below the mask provides all the geography not revealed by the mask. The identical image above the mask is used with desired (less than 100%) opacity to attenuate the strength of the reflection. Seriously, download the brief tutorial/explanation and you will immediately see how it works best. As for other software to do the ripple effects, I couldn't comment because I only use the one referenced which is very powerful except for the limited selection capability which effectively prevents it from being used exclusively for creating the entire image as used in PTE. This software can be used to create excellent rain effects as well as ripples of several types and including flow direction, etc. I just realized that perhaps you haven't seen the latest post I made on this so I'm posting the link to the example and from there a link to the AV tutorial below. http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?/topic/17621-things-which-can-be-done-with-pte/ Best regards, Lin

Methinks you need an analog to digital converter... Best regards, Lin

That's really bad news - Tucows is usually quite safe. I'll see if I can put the necessary files together later today and provide a link. Here's the link: http://www.lin-evans.org/sqirlz/sqirlzall.zip Just download and extract in a folder and run the install program. There should be no malware in this... Best regards, Lin

Settings - Toggle Full Screen or F4 - also the little arrow icon to the left of "Slides" at the bottom right of your screen is a toggle. Best regards, Lin

At the top of your screen ... The Toolbar (File Publish Project Slide Settings Help). Click on Settings then Preferences then Toolbars. I would suggest checking all until you are thoroughly familiar with Version 8. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, That's an interesting concept. I think Dominique (theDom) once had a crystal ball which rolled across the screen and magnified as it did that. It was done in a similar way to the method we use to create a "magnifying glass" and move it about the subject area magnifying what lies beneath. To make it accurate, some distortion would need to be implemented. I've been corresponding with Panos Efstathiadis (PanosFX) about the possibility of creating a Photoshop action for iridescent soap bubbles. He's taken it under consideration and if he does it, it wouldn't be too difficult to then perhaps create a crystal ball action with the same type construct. That would greatly facilitate doing something like that with PTE. Best regards, Lin

Hi Moises, What a tremendous amount of work!! Incredible!! I absolutely love Morasoft_151, that is totally cool! Best regards, Lin

Thanks Tom, that's good news. I'll see if Ron has his issue solved yet... Later - here's the link, maybe you could make a suggestion? http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?/topic/16715-create-an-exe-file-for-mac-in-vmware-fusion/ Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, If you could, try outputting a native MacIntosh exe from your 8.1 system and see if it works properly on your Mac. I think Ron was having problems doing that for some reason a couple days ago.. Best regards, Lin

I will keep Win XP on my development system - no reason to change. There have been recent issues and the hackers are now having a field day, but it's still my favorite OS for Windows. Just two days ago I spent over 13 hours chasing a really annoying virus which I picked up following an Adobe lead. The Windows Security Essentials immediately flagged it and flashed a message which indicated that I need do nothing because it was handled by the program. Turns out it wasn't at all. Not only wasn't the problem "fixed" but subsequent use of the external Microsoft security program provided on the Microsoft site could find no problem. I ran AVG, Kaspersky, Malwarebytes, Super Anti-Spyware, and Ad-Aware. All found "some" problems and corrected, but none could find the culprit. What happened is that every few seconds a "rundll32.exe" file was added to the task manager. After a time there were over 150 instances of this file each sapping RAM. If I deleted one it was immediately replaced. I opened Windows in the Safe mode and looked everywhere but could not find the culprit. I searched the web for similar problems to no avail. Finally, I downloaded a freeware program called Process Explorer by Sysinternals. This program let me see what was linked with the complete path to each file being currently displayed in the Windows Task Manager. It also let me "suspend" as well as erase the action of any running program. I discovered a file in the Windows System 32 folder called "winthemes_services.dll" which was proliferating all the rundll32.exe clones. I went back to the Safe Mode, searched for the winthemes_services.dll file just to be sure it wasn't lurking somewhere else and deleted it from the Windows System 32 folder. Case closed. Thirteen hours of frustration and literally none of the current anti-virus/anti-threat software could recognize the culprit. I guess these are the things we will have to suffer with in the future when we leave Win XP open to infection on the web..... Hopefully, even though Microsoft no longer supports XP the antivirus protections will still work when and if they find all the proliferation of threats we can soon expect for this OS... Best regards, Lin

I posted a link to the tutorial/explanation on the original post... Best regards, Lin

Hi Frans, Yes please send me a link or the PTE file and I'll have a look. Best regards, Lin

Hi Frans, Thanks! There is no need to add a white rectangle. The mask you create is easiest if it is a PNG file with pure white where you want the image contained within the mask to show and transparency or black where you wish to show the image in the layer above the mask construct. I will create an AVI tutorial and post it here sometime later today. Best regards, Lin

Warning: This demo contains tasteful nudity - do not download if this will offend you... the images I used in this demo are not my photography - they are web images chosen for specific reasons pertaining to their suitability for demonstration and construction purpose. The two images of the girl lying in the branches of a tree were monochrome images which I colored in Photoshop. They were chosen for their complexity to experiment with Photoshop coloring techniques. The "bubbles" were created in Photoshop. The rippling water in the fountain bowl was created as an animated gif with SqirlzReflect, an excellent freeware product available on the web. PTE's built-in masking was used to confine the effect to the desired place. The fountain effect was created with ParticleIllusions as an RGBA alpha channel avi. On the second image, the canal, the rippling effect was also created with the aforementioned program, Photoshop and PTE. Note the rippling water in the reflection of the large rising bubble. This was done via a mask created with Photoshop. The third image was a difficult one to create. The multi-object format presented a "head scratch" to determine a way to achieve the rippling water with all the rocks and shadows and get it correct. I worked out a way to do this using a combination of PTE, SqirlzReflect and a complex mask created in Photoshop. The details of how to do this will be made available via a tutorial if anyone is interested and lets me know. This effect can't be achieved without an image editor such as Photoshop to build the mask or without SqirlzReflect and PTE's ability to mix images via opacity and masking. The "Dreams" text was created with a Photoshop action which I will make available for anyone interested. http://www.lin-evans.org/ken/dreams.zip (about 70 meg zipped Windows exe file) http://www.lin-evans.org/ken/dreamsmac (about 70 meg zipped MacIntosh native exe file) Added one summer sequence to the original on 4/15/14 As promised - here's the explanation - tutorial for the rippling water on a complex image: http://www.lin-evans.org/tutorial/ripplewatercompleximage.zip (about 111 meg zipped avi) Best regards, Lin

Hi Philippe, The template is free and you can download it by going here: http://www.learnpte.com/learn/learn.html Scroll down to number 34 and you can also download tutorials on how to use this. Also keep in mind that with PTE 8.0, you have a cube "style" which you can access by first loading six images or animated gifs or videos or any combination and selecting them by holding down the CTRL key and clicking on any six. Next click the "Slide Style" button then click on "Experimental" tab and choose "Cube." Next simply choose "Apply" and you will instantly have a cube with either six images or any combination of images, videos or animated gifs. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mur, What that refers to is just the features available from the Objects and Animations screen with PTE. The term "editor" refers to the various features of being able to make objects larger, smaller, change opacity, pan, zoom, rotate, apply 3D transforms, change the center, blur, change color, etc. There is no other "tool" available to anyone other than those tools provided via the Objects and Animations screen. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, Cool!! I think if you duplicated the original on subsequent slides and perhaps inverted subsequent slides horizontally and vertically, slightly changing position, size, etc., and interspersed a bit of blue sky in between slides you would have the sensation of flying through clouds... By simply modifying the same slide you would not incur any additional overhead and the file size would not increase substantially. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mur, Could you explain were you heard this term and in reference to what? There is nothing available to anyone outside of the PTE development team which is not available to everyone. Best regards, Lin

Last two posts deleted - off topic guys .... Best regards, Lin

Hi Jim, The very first thing I would suggest is to buy a small quantity of rewritable DVD's so you don't end up making expensive coasters. It's possible that you simply have a defective DVD. I doubt that the issue has anything at all to do with "outdated software." If software once worked to properly burn a DVD, unless there has been file corruption, there is absolutely no reason why it would not always work properly. DVD's themselves have a shelf life and even a more probable issue is the DVD burner itself. They have a definite cycle life. After so many burns, DVD burners expire. In past years I've purchased literally dozens of DVD burners because they would expire after so many uses. Sometimes I would get 500 burns from one, sometimes less. Rarely did I buy any decent DVD burner which gave me more than about 550 cycles before dying. That's something manufacturers don't tell you, but is well known in the industry. DVD "players" don't have this issue, but burners do. There are emissions produced when DVD's are burned and these settle on the optical components and they just become unreliable. So first get a small quantity of rewritable DVD's to experiment with, then try again. If you get a failure you haven't created a coaster just reformat the DVD and go on with experimentation. If you have an additional external DVD burner try it. Unfortunately there is no "easy" answer but substitution of DVD and then substitution of the burner is how I would approach this. Best regards, Lin