Barry Beckham

I suspect this is a recourse issue, but try slowing down your pan and you may find things then become far smoother. Although you say you don't wish to change the animation 20 seconds is a long time to be panning an image IMHO. So, slowing the movement may be a win win situation....Just a thought

DaveG I don't connect my monitors with HDMI because my PC's do not have a HDMI connection and I rarely use a laptop to demonstrate with. At some stage I suppose I will, but for now I don't. Downsizing an image doesn't seem to be such an issue as upsizing and I don't have a problem with what it shows on screen. My initial thought was that I wanted nothing less than 1920*1080, but I have been informed by Epson that the HD projectors are not as robust as others and are designed for home cimemas rather than for portable use.

Yaughtsman Yes, I agree with that. I am hoping that a new projector will be donated to me, so cost isn't an issue. What is an issue is quality and the 2000:1 contrast ratio of the newer projectors against my current 400:1 is what I hope will give increased quality of the projected image. From what I have seen so far in Australia, the quality of projectors used by clubs isn't good. As soon as I saw the Noosa Photo Club one in action I kept trying to sharpen the image, it was softer than I was used to. Another I saw was so bad I would submit any images to be projected by it. What about the widescreen format though?

Image Size I recently pondered the question of what size slide show do I make and why. I wasn’t asking the question because I didn’t know the answer, but because I was keen to hear the views of the more experienced PTE users. Many of the size/format/animation issues we used to have to grapple with have largely been sorted by Igor and his team, so the goal posts had moved quite a bit Over the past months I have been replacing some of my older PTE tutorial disks. This involves recording new video tutorials and making PTE demos to go with those videos. Before I started I had to settle on a size for the PTE demos I would make. I wanted them to display well on all monitors and have a good shelf life too. I.e. they were big enough not to be left behind very quickly. Its only when you see a slide show played on a 1920*1200 monitor and then one at 1024*768 played on the same monitor that the difference hits you. Size isn’t everything of course, but all else being equal the larger size look impressive. I eventually chose to make the demos at 1920*1200 to match my main Dell monitor running that same resolution. I have tested the demos on a PC that is approaching 2 years old, it is a Quad core 2.66 GHz with 4 gig of ram and a Nvidia Gforce 8600GT graphics card. These PTE demos have involved quite a bit of animation and I have been delighted with the results, smooth animations and faultless transitions. What I also like is that the shows play back very well on my very old single core PC running 1024*768 resolution. I have a black band top and bottom due to the format mismatch, but a thin line seems to hold that in nicely. The quality of the images in the demo slide shows remains great and the animations are nearly all handled well. There is a small stutter on an isolated few, but given the age and spec of the machine, not surprising. In summary I am finding that the 1920*1200 is a great size to work with, easily converted to HD format of 1920*1080 for DVD’s and all those issues I am fussy about are handled great. PC Projector Now I am in the market for a better projector, which I would be using to demonstrate both Photoshop and PTE, including the playing of the demos made at 16:10 format. I have settled on either the Epson 1725 or 1735. The 1725 remains with 4:3 format while the 1735 is capable of 16:10. Now, the 16:10 format would match my monitor and those of many of my audience. It will match nearly all laptops and screens now sold and better reflect the image format we get from our cameras. (I believe the 1735 will also handle 4:3 as well as 16:10) Who would like to bat around the pros and cons if my logic for a while?

Colin New Zealand is on our places to visit, probably 2010 now as we have plenty to do for the rest of this year. I would be delighted to do a few demos while over there and we will keep you in mind. I have an all day PTE demo at Redlands CC in Brisbane next week, that should be fun B

Ralph Not sure whay I used that Cricket thing, I am definately not a fan. Cricket bores me to death so all the scores and who beat who goes right over my head. Last month I tried to get my new club invoved into AV. I created a disk for them, with the trial version of PTE and spent some time demonstrating the process. The brief was to produce a simple show using the 10 images usable in the trial software. My thoughts were that as soon as they got into PTE it would gather pace. We got about 10 sequences, but all the usual traps were fallen into. One brought the project file instead of the exe, another managed to create an avi that wouldn't run on the night for some reason, but I took them all home and in the end all the sequences are now watchable and we will come up with a prize for the next meeting when we announce the winners I think I should be called Father Barry, touring the world preaching about PTE

Igor Thats all looking pretty good. Barry

Daveg I don't know if it was a print competition too, just projected, but I lost interest when I heard that nonsense. Ed Here is my take on all of this. These rules and regulations are another battle in someones demented war on digital photography. I don't want to/can't be bothered to learn any Photoshop work so you shouldn't either is their way of viewing the world. Have you noticed how much they talk about not needing to know anything about Photoshop? If they don't need to use it, then shut up about it and concentrate on producing some decent photography. Why do they feel the need to continually justify not using any afterwork. Your absolutely right about "urinating into the wind" but if we stand together perhaps the stream will start to push them back I am getting sick and tired of this nonsense and those who utter it. They may as well hang a sign around their necks which reads. Mediocre Photographer at work who can't be bothered.

Jfa Yes, it's Alien Skin Snap Art and I am quite happy with the effects it gives and there are loads of sliders and options that should keep me busy for ages. To be honest there are so many of these filter programs around that if your not careful you can almost give over your life to trying them all. The thing with filters in my view is that you rarely get a result straight out of the box and if you do, so do a 10,000 other people and our images then all look the same. I think the trick is just a little work with the filters of your choice and Photoshop/Elements. After all any filter will have a different effect depending on the resolution of the image used. Most of the time I use filters it is with a greatly reduced resolution because they just don't work well on high resolution images, unless your intention is a 6ft by 4ft print.

Minimum or no pan/zoom/rotate allowed. Sound and image start and end together. Minimal digital manipulation of the images. 1 entry / competition (even though there is more than one section) Submit in DVD format (not EXE ....) They do make me laugh. They say minimal image manipulation as if they could actually tell anyway. There is one other rule they should apply. Only unsharp and badly exposed images must be used. Any sign of good quality photography is NOT allowed. You can almost see some rustic group sitting round a table all with their thinking caps on coming up with the rules and seeing just how much rubbish they can cram in. The sad thing is people go along with this because they don't want to upset or offend. Well, perhaps its time we did start to offend, if that is what it takes. I have just spent 3 days at the Photographic Society of Queensland convention and heard lots of knowledgable speakers talk on a variety of subjects. It was a great event and brilliantly organised, but if I hear just one more photographer say " I like to get my photography right at the taking stage and not have to put right mistakes in Photoshop" I will poke them with a sharp stick. All my respect for them evapourates when they say that as it shows their ignorance. I heard of one competition rule the other day where digital images have to be submitted without any manipulation at all and straight from the camera. What about Raw shooters? Do they really think this is the way to quality photography and to inspire others. Either they should change their hobby or perhaps I should. I mean what rules does AV need. 1. All digital slide shows should be provided as an exe file to run on a PC projector at x resolution 2. Sequences should be no longer than 7 minutes 3. Any special software or projection equipment outside of 1 above must be supplied by the club/author Do we need much else? And here is a final thought, seeing at the film buffs tried to hold back and ban digital for so long, let us now ban them from digital AV competitions, just for spite eh

Tip Try blending a filtered version of your image with an unfiltered one. (layers in Photoshop etc) It often allows the effect to be tempered for a much better effect or tempered in isolated places.

I say old man........This just ain't Cricket What fun, keep this thread going, its better than TV Here is something amusing. I have just seen an AV competition here in Queensland and I think it took me longer to read and digest all the rules and paperwork attached to the email than it would have taken me to make the sequence.

Dom Many thanks, that is what I needed

Davy I was thinking about it and hearing what peoples views were, but havn't taken the plunge yet. I have been asked by a potential buyer of PTE works on 64 bit and I realized I didn't know for sure. The question was in relation to Vista 64 bit actually, so perhaps my question should be, does PTE run well on Vista 64 bit? Many thanks

Does anyone run PTE on a 64 bit machine OK?

Dave G You will find an untouched (No manipulation at all from a raw file) Canon 1ds Mk3 image at http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/daveg.zip but, really what is the point? You are looking for evidence of a problem that most users of Photoshop never actually see in practical use. I understand that some people like the technical side of the hobby, but whatever you find it will not alter the fact that the advice we should be giving newer users of PTE is simple Save your images as a jpg at level 6 and you won't go far wrong. What is the point in making one of the more simple tasks in the making of a slide show appear more difficult than it is. I had a slide show link sent me yesterday, but the slide show looks awful on my monitor because it is being enlarged way beyond what the author expected or even knew about. See my point about quality? All it needed was one little box ticked and his show would have looked great. What level he chose to save his jpg images at is not irrelavent. I hear the same arguments about unsharp mask, but my advice is always the same. Forget what you have been told about over sharpening as all of that advice is generally aimed at high resolution images destined for printing. In AV we do not print our images, we do not enlarge them and what we see at actual pixels is what we get. In addition to that, the image will be on screen for only a few seconds. So, if an image needs a little more sharpness and it is not obviously way overdone then I say give it what you think it needs.

If you want a full frame image from a Canon 1ds Mk3 I can provide you with one, but don't forget sharpness and quality come not only from the pixels, but from the lighting, exposure, manipulation, image content, etc etc etc

Not sure when I will get that far south, but I am sure to let you know. I am introducing Noosa Club Members to a PTE demo next Monday and setting a 10 image competition that they can attempt with the trial software. I am sure once they have a little dabble with PTE they will get hooked. On another note I tried PSG again the other day and it could not handle the same show made for PTE. I had the latest version, but the transitions lacked smoothness.

Is not an image saved at level 6 on a 22mp camera bigger than one from a 12mp camera? I have no idea, never had reason to find out to be honest. All I know is that if you start out with great quality, that quality is still evident when the image is reduced in size. I noticed that years ago when a friend bought a really top of the range film scanner. You could see the difference in his images even at 8in by 6in email images. With regards the Moire effect, that is a battle that each individual has to deal with and I do seem to experience it quite a bit whenever I animate an image. That is why you don't see too much animation from me. As you probably know there are lots of ways to deal with the moire effect, but they all effect image quality in some way. I have had many occasions where an animation seemed appropriate, but I had to give up the idea, because I could not get rid of the moire effect and was not prepared to accept a soft image just to use animation. Of course the best way to defeat the moire effect is not to animate DaveG I have just created a crop from an original image and saved it at different Jpg compressions 12,6 etc and I cannot see any difference and I am looking at images from a 22mp camera on a brand new flat screen. I have three other people here with me and they can't tell either, so that rules out my eyesight. Don't you think there is an obsession with this potential loss of quality? I happen to like and agree with your particular obsession, because I rather think it is the same obsession as mine. Image quality ! It is essentail in my view to what we do, but how come that in about 15 years of working with Photoshop I have not seen evidence of this loss of quality? We save our images for a slide show, they will not be enlarged, they will not be printed, what we see is what we get. I even tried to re-create this loss of quality once by repeatingly saving the image and couldn't do it. For general advice to those who ask, why not keep the answer simple. Save a level 6 and you will retain a good balance between image quality and image size for the slide show. Many of the problems experienced by newer users are caused by the images being too large, which we have seen in this forum. I am not suggesting that it is wrong to save images for a show at Level 12 and for those who know what they are doing and they PC will handle the files fair enough, but I do believe that it would cause more problems than it would solve if that is passed on as the best advice for all. I am sure that time will change this and in a few years we will be dropping 20meg files into our slide shows, well perhaps

Peter I mean both actually and perhaps DaveG is right and I need a visit to the optician, but I say again I don't have any issues with image quality and get asked over and over again how I get my images to clear and sharp in my slide shows, so I must be doing something right Lets be honest, if a fraction of the effort put into this subject was redirected into image content and other AV quality issues AV's all round would be far better. If we tell newer users of PTE to save a Jpg at level 6 they will not be confused by all the differences in opinions and they will make a great slide show. I suppose there could be one explanation and that is if you reduce the quality from a very high end camera (22Mp) in Photoshop down to match the pixels of a lower end camera (6Mp) the images are not the same. You get better quality from the high end reduced size camera. However, I don't think it changes my thoughts at all and I will continue using level 6

This might be another angle and hope on topic, since I have not read anyone taking the individual JPEG file compression into concideration Laszlo Laszlo Personally, I don't think compression is an issue that is very important and I also feel that many get wrapped up in it because they have been told that quality can be lost. Perhaps it is a deficiency on my part, but save a jpeg at level 6 and 12 and I can't see any difference and nor can anyone else who I have asked. I have never used a compression higher than 6 for any of my slide shows and image quality is not an issue that I compromise on. If there was the slightest evidence that a image saved at level 12 appeared on screen better than level 6 I would change immediately. If there is a change, I can't see it

I tried, but he seems reluctant to do that

Peter It was called Leaving from an album called Winjana by Tony Occonor

Laszlo Thank you for the reply and after the amount of typing you did I am almost reluctant to say that you have misunderstood the thread. I do know what I am doing and I also lecture on topics such as PTE and Photoshop. The issue of size did not refer to the length of the show at all, but the image size. I already know the answer to the question I posed, but I was interested in the views of other serious users. If you read my posts again, you will see what I mean

Yaughtsman I understand what you mean better now, but progress doesn't stop, the same thing was said at 6MP and look where we are now. It will continue to grow I think.