Barry Beckham

FH Do it the other way round, isn't the message tab where we can set that information so it shows automatically in the main tab > Customise startup. It doesn't I can get the customise start up working from the main tab, but what purpose does the messages tab serve, because its passing me by completely. I wonder if the messages Tab is used by anyone.

Sounds perfectly logical to me BJ

Am I the only person who cannot get this to do anything at all. Example, change the startup window details to reflect who I am, where the web site is etc etc, but I cannot get it to show in the Startup window in the Main Tab. The only place my changed text shows in in the messages tab

Craig Your doing nothing wrong, read the page at the link below that may make things more clear. http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/audiovisual/dvd/dvd.htm

This wasn't a serious use or anything to demonstrate fractals, just playing with them for this sequence. I can't see myself returning to them, but they do have the ability to while away a few winter evenings. Yes, I know it's summer now, though you wouldn't believe it in the UK. Global warming in reverse.

Jeff I think it would be a good idea to be able to set those Cover, fit to slide options as user defaults, but I have also asked for a name change of those options too. They should be called cover screen and fit to screen not fit to slide. I can't really see the point in you retaining format only to let the software throw it away for you, it makes no sense. Maintain the format by all means, but arrange a size that gives you a border all the way round, not just top and bottom. That is far more attractive to the eye, rather like how we would present a print. Then select the disable scaling option and your home and dry. You can even create your own Png frame to pop over the top of the images for a real classy appearance.

I guess members are not impressed with fractals then

Xaver I think these types of changes are great for us experts who know PTE backwards and a couple of new changes now and again don't over tax us much. Igor probably has to consider the wider implications of creating a software that while desirable could be over complicated for the new user. I appreciate that it can also be argued in reverse that some sound editing may make the software more user friendly. Now its coming to something, I arguing with myself, who needs a forum

Adda Ever heard the saying Jack of all trades, Master of none. Well, some of those other slide show programs fall fair and square into that saying. No, I agree with FH, lets concentrate on the slide show quality and use a dedicated sound editor for our sound files

Gilbert You can do this with windows. Hit the pause button when an image in your show is on screen. Then hit the Print Scrn button. Open a blank page in your image editor at least the resolution of the images in your show and then hit Ctrl+V You will probably see the image appear, which you can now save and use again.

With respect to Canteau, I disagree with his issue over the size of the images. Size does not equate to the impact and interest of a slide show, unless it was really tiny of course. If I am right Dave you have produced a slide show that will play within a 1024*768 pixel screen and made sure it will not be stretched and the quality destroyed when played on other machines running a higher resolution. I thoroughly support that reasoning and feel it is the right thing to do. I thought the slide show was great and there were lots of places I recognised and the images were good. My only issue would be with your border, it is just a bit too bright for me and it competes for attention between the border and your images. A border should support the images, but here I feel it doesn't quite do that. Subdue it and you have a great slide show.

I have had the same thing and have sent an email to Avast this morning to let them know, sit tight for a while as Limey says they usually act pretty quickly

Be careful it can become quite an addictive program.

Cèlou Don't worry, Your not going daft, it was my fault. I uploaded the file, added my thread and then realised that I had uploaded the file to the wrong place and had to do it again. I guess you clicked to download before enough of the file was uploaded.

I have a slide show that some may be interested in, but it's not for the feint hearted. It is around 150 meg in size so will take some downloading for some. It uses fractals that Greg Gordon told me about. He has a few of these shows on his site www.greggordonphotography.com The software to create them is called Apophysis and it's free. The show had been made for 1280*1024 screens and may not be seen at it's best at other resolutions. Remember, you can easily change resolution to watch a show made at a different resolution and change it back after, it only takes seconds. http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/slideshow/Albedo_0.39.zip

Create image or a blank PNG file, animate that. Copy and paste that file as many times as you want images in the show. (Ctrl+c then Ctrl+V). Then add your images via Add Image in the Objects and Animation screen as a child of the parent. ie add the image with the green bounding box showing around the PNG file. The (child) images will take on the animation of the blank PNG's (parent)

I have booked myself on a science of Fluid Dynamics and liquids in free-fall state 2 year full time course. I can hardly wait I think you both need to get out more

Peter I am very interested to know what you are producing that requires 900 slides and how long you expect it to run for

The flash demo took so long to get to 7% I gave up waiting

And nicely destroy the quality too no doubt

Do a search for the latest Graphics card drivers, that may help. The problem is almost certainly that particular PC not being up to the job. Don't turn off graphics acceleration, that won't help. Almost any modern desktop will run PTE, but a good known make graphics card helps.

Lets be honest, you wouldn't do any editing of a Jpeg image created for a PTE show. UNLESS - that editing was to put right the fact that you had forgotton to add the thin line around the edge of the image as you have with the rest, or forgotton to add your unsharp mask. This is where Ctrl+W is so valuable. All the main editing would be done well before the reduction in size for the show. You would not, or should not make other changes such as levels, Hue and Saturation without going back to the original. (however, as FH says, you can get away with it when you know what your doing) but that statement sometimes confuses newer users of PTE, so it's probably best to always say go back to the original for most changes. We are really lucky these days with the software we have to work with and I think that only those who did a fair amount of darkroom work will appreciate just how fortunate we are. We can now shoot in Raw and edit as a smart object. A smart object allows us to go back into camera Raw from the main body of Photoshop and update, or change the Raw settings we have already used. Talk about have your cake and eat it! It's just like live text and the Fx we have in layers. We can add smart filters and can make changes or mask what we have produced and still go back into Camera Raw if we want to. The route to quality images has never been easier and I use Raw and manipulate as Smart objects all the time. You can make a layer copy of a smart object and rasterize just one of the layers. The other can be opened back up in Camera Raw to change your settings and then blended with the other layer. Imaging that landscape where you can get a powerful sky at the expense of the forground, or a great forground at the expense of the sky. Use Raw smart objects and have both. The command to turn on smart objects is in the hyperlink at the bottom centre of the Raw palette, a little tick box, small, but so important. Smart objects limit some of the editing we can do before rasterising (turning a smart object back to a std layer) and I suspect that in future versions of Photoshop more and more of our editing will be done in Camera Raw

Bob I wonder if the info at the links below are of any help http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/audiovisual/dvd/dvd.htm http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/audiovisual/dvd/dvdprobs.htm

Yes, there is a way round it, but you would need some screen grab software like Hypersnaps or one of the many others

If you highlight any object in the Object section of the O&A, you can hit Ctrl+c and then Ctrl+v to copy that object/text to any of the other images in the show. That way you can skip to the next image and Ctrl+v, then the next and so on. I use this as a quick way to apply a frame to all the images in a slide show. If this was done with text, you could then go into the copied text to adjust what words you want, but size and style would remain constant. However, if we can have something built into PTE for this all the better.