Barry Beckham

I have been using Wacom graphics tablets since the very early days of Photoshop (14 years ish) and currently use a Wacom Bamboo I did a one to one tutorial with a person recently at their home using their equipment and attached to the computer was a pretty nice mouse on a mat with a nice wrist guard. There was nothing wrong with the mouse, but it was absolutely rubbish for the work we need to do in digital photography and it brought home to me just how good a graphics tablet is for digital photography. It was like trying to sign my name with a pen glued to a brick. The difference in the speed and quality of the work you can do with a graphics tablet just has to be seen to be believed. If your not using one, you really need to ask why. They take about a week to get used to, but bluetak the pad to the bench to the right/left of your keyboard and keep it in one position and you will find the learning will be 100% easier. Unplug your mouse so the first time something feels awkward you don't immediately bolt back to the old familiar mouse and you will not regret it. Finally, if you are a Photoshop user, turn off the pressure sensitivity of the pen from the brush palette in Photoshop and use the preferences along the top of the screen for brush size and flow. The difference this tool makes to the quality of your images is worth triple the cost of the graphics tablet. It's been years since I used a mouse in Photoshop and this one to one really brought home how superiour the graphics tablet and pen is

I have just upgraded my Beta copy from 21 to 23. On my Vista machine I got a brief message about a floating point, but the install appears to be OK and I can open projects made with earlier beta copies On my XP machine it installed without any warning windows appearing, but will not open any projects made with previous beta copies I have had to go back to beta 21 to get it to work. I tried a couple of installs and it is the same every time. What I get when I try to open a project is the window below I tried an uninstall and a fresh download, but it shows the same fault on the XP computer

Potwnc Thanks for the offer of help, but the 64bit was a bit of a long shot, I just wanted to make sure as from what he told me that was all I had to latch onto. I am not sure what sequence (s) he was downloading. He was so short on words that every email seemed to demand 3 questions from me. I think the guy had a problem on his PC. I covered all the usual, glitch downloading, anti virus, but he was always a bit vague Its done now, but thanks anyway. A thought just occurred, I wonder if he was downloading the Mac versions B

Dom Someone has contacted me with all sorts of problems getting my slide shows to run on their machine. I have been trying to help and the only thing that I could latch onto was the fact he used 64 bit. There was no other issues to cause the fact that he said they would not play. He is very short on words too and it has been hard trying to fault find when someone only gives you little bits of information at a time. He has not come back to me so perhaps my last suggestion did the trick. I said try another PC.

Lazlo No problem I do the same myself sometimes when there is so much to read

Igor I wouldn't worry about it, It must be something odd with my machine Barry

Lazlo I think you have the wrong end of the stick here, I don't have any issues with my shows running at 1920*1200. I was just giving others the heads up that most laptops owned by clubs are not up to showing their animated slide shows as I witnessed at a recent AV competition. Some of the animation was hopeless because it was PSG. Then the debate moved over to laptops in general.

Dave I would be very nervous about those mid priced machines, tried loads in the Uk that were rubbish and what is the point of getting the bare level you need. One upgrade to PTE or Photoshop and your now lagging behind. Eric I like to demo with full size files so that people can see things done in the real world, not a PC that appears to be like lightening because the demonstrator is using 2 MB images. Open a Canon 1Ds Mk3 file at 16 bit and use smart objects and 3-4 layers and your up to 400mb + My current towers all do this regularly with little problem. My demo machine also doubles as the one I use for recording tutorials so it needs to run video grabbing and Photoshop easily. Your also right I don't do a lot of animation, but if and when I do it has to be faultless or I find it unacceptable. Audio visual to me is the smooth flow of images anything not animated super smooth should be discarded in my view. I want the flexibilty to do it when I want to and have it right. Lazlo That sounds all very well, but what sells for $3500 in US or Canada usually sells for £3500 in the UK. Brits could never really understand that and Australia seems a bit more expensive for this type of kit. Unit costs I suppose. Having said all that I have been asked to do a couple of one day demos in Adelaide and that is over 2000 kilometers away so a plane trip it would have to be. I would have little choice but to use my current laptop and make sure I didn't put it under too much strain.

I remembered it was discussed but the search never sems to work for me, I put 64 bit into the search parameters and it came up with nothing Someone if having difficulties downloading and playing my slide shows and between his one line posts, which don't explain much I am having difficulty locating the problem for him. Thanks

Eric See, that seems rather a high price to me. The last time I needed a PC to take to demonstrations I ended up buying a tower rather than a laptop as the prices quoted were about what you have said. To get a laptop that would handle the raw files I use in demos and all the animation in PTE. I discovered I would have to pay a lot more for a laptop what I would for a Tower as you have confirmed here. These days you would get a very respectable tower PC for £1800. It was a few years ago since I did this research, but I seem to recall I got a tower half the price of the laptop and with a superiour power. Now I appreciate you can't tuck a tower PC under your arm and take it on a flight, but my demos are done by car as we have lots of other stuff to take, so the size wasn't an issue. A car full of kit is a car full of kit whether you have a tower or a laptop, it doesn't make a heap of difference. I am just not a big fan of laptops mainly for that reasons, plus the keyboards are mostly black and hard to see in a darkened room when your giving a demo, even with a light. The keys are smaller too and every laptop I seem to have bought works well with the battery for 12 months and then needs power hookup all the time because the battery is shot. I checked the cost of a new battery once and got the fright of my life. On top of that I have seen a lot of people doing demos and some get in a right twist using a laptop, that I don't seem to fall into using a desktop. Most laptop users just go out and buy a laptop, they don't check up to see if the machine is up to the job, they assume it is, but my experience the other night tells me there is a huge gap between your £1800 machine and what most people/clubs are using. If I were about to spend that sort of money for a demo machine I would put it into a small toer and screw a handle on the top

Igor I will try, but I have already found a solution. I wanted to use PTE for an instructional show where I added commentary and needed a screen grab of the Project Options window. I created that screen grab with both Hypersnaps ( a small program that does it on a key stroke) and I did the same thing with the print screen button and pasted it into a Photoshop document. In Photoshop I cropped to just the Project options window. I used those screen grabs in the slide show and set the parameters for the size of my show and set the object (the screen Grab) to 100% size In the PTE show on playback the screen grab takes on a very slight softness, which is not seen in Photoshop. The solution is to past the screen grab into a new document at the size I am working at (1920*1200) and then is displayes fine. I have made a two slide test show for you that will work on a key stroke. Both images are the same screen grab. The first one is the screen screen grab window, the second is the very same screen grab pasted onto a page. http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/igor.zip

Are there any 64 bit OS users running PTE?

If you don't mind me asking, what did you have to pay for that high end laptop

Using your own equipment is a good idea if you can do it, but its a shame to see the shows like that after the effort put into them. No-one would accept this degrading of images in a stills competition, but with AV they do so with a shrug as though it is inevitable

Eric Well, of course you know best. In my naivety I was just trying to keep the answer simple and assumed the question was made by a newer user of PTE who is not likely to make a 600 image slide show. Who does? Present company accepted of course. I don't know what I was thinking ! Lets hope Betsy hasn't slit her wrists in frustration.

Eric No offense to Betsy here, but the question asked suggests someone who is a newer user of PTE and in my experience people want a simple answer.

I am a bit confused here Why would another utility be required to clear one sound file link? Unless I am missing something, arn't we making things over complicated for Betsy.

I love the way I can open the size position in pixels window and the 3D window and they remain on screen until I choose to close them. Is it possible to include the Adjust Images and Border window to do the same. That closes down after each use and is not so quick or easy to use.

Betsy You need to look into the Project Options and then the Music tab. If there is a track title in there that you have now discarded remove the link to it. If that doesn't do the trick, you must have a sound file linked to an individual image. In that case, open your slide show into PTE and make sure you can see the thumbnails along the bottom of the screen. Highlight slide 1 and then use the cursor control keys (those arrows up/down - left/right) skip from image to image while looking at the top right of your screen, where it says add sound. Any stray music/sound files will soon show up, then remove the one that is causing the error.

Peter/John I experienced this myself recently and it baffled me for a while. I have made hundreds of sound tracks in the same way, so I am familar with what usually comes out the end of the process. However, on one accasion I experienced what John has explained after editing music in Audacity and bringing it into PTE. All the data told me the track was x length, WMP showed it right, Audacity showed it right, but PTE showed me it was Y length. I didn't waste time trying to chase my tail and simply opened Adobe Audition and edited the sound there, it then displayed at the correct length in PTE. It hasn't happened since...........Conclusion? One of those odd computer things and there are just not enough hours in the day or the will for me to try and track it all down. A rougue Mp3 perhaps, a glitch in Audactity. Who knows !!!

I went to an AV competition the other night and watched the winners and HC's from a competition. There were about 15 AV shows in all, many of which contained animation and some where made with PSG. I guess 10 of the sequences contained some animation, and not one of them projected correctly without jerking across the screen. It is quite off putting on a big screen. Beware those of you entering AV competitions, if your keen on animation, you might be quite disappointed what the judges and audience may see of your show. I tried to suggest that next year a desktop PC is used, but laptops seem to be all the rage these days. Can't think why really.

Bill/Nobeefstu My shows are not complex at all, you should know me by now, I can only cope with simple stuff I doubt the complexity of a slide show would prevent it playing would it. It might slow it down or not look so good, but it should at least play. I think the issue is either on the Mac in question and is a setting or something, but Lin may have hit the nail on the head and it is a small bug that needs ironing out perhaps.

Eric That is not what I am talking about at all, what I suggested is something different, so don't fret and you don't have to differ either. Dave Just tried v5.6 and it does still work in that version just as I was suggesting in my post, so perhaps it is something that Igor has to address. I suppose I should have tried v5.6 before I put finger to keys However, I rarely use fonts in PTE preferring the greater styles in Photoshop, so I wasn't as familiar with the PTE text controls. At least we have highlighted the issue.

Dave G I picked up your earlier post in reply to Eric Eric, If you type some text into O&A then go to Properties you can outline the text font and use your up and down arrows on't' keyboard to step through the different fonts and see how they look on the screen in real time. I find that this is a good enough procedure - would you agree? DaveG It doesn't seem to work in PTE Bete 20 now

Dom Faultless, the animation and presentation was bang on for the subject. That is something a family would want to keep and play again and again