Ronniebootwest

Hi Contaxman! Thankyou for the very fast response to this question. I tried all sorts of ways of achieving this but failed miserably. Your advice shows just how simple it is in PTE. (when you know how) I have now tried it out on one of my shows and it works perfectly. THANKYOU! Ron West

Wow! This topic has certainly raised some hackles. The original question was about storing images on to either a CD or DVd and we certainly seem to have blown the topic out of the water. I share the desire (with the originator of this thread) to backup my images in some way. At the moment I simply use a 250gb external hard drive connected via a 'firewire'. When I run out of space on the first drive I will simply buy another and 'daisy chain' this with the first. With firewire, you can daiychain as many as you wish (up to a point. However, back to DVD's - I am going to do a test for myself now to see just what the problem is. Watch this space! Ron West

Instead of the usual white/black or gradient background for my images, I want to use a textured screen that I have created myself. How do I apply this textured effect to the screen in PTE please? Ron West

Nice to see that you are prepared to offer praise to this author. I will be downloading this show so that I can share your enthusiam. Ron West

Does this mesan that some people are still trying to 'capture' the jpeg images from a PTE slide show? Naughty! Naughty! Ron West

Hello Barbara, thankyou for joining in on this thread. In the UK, all we hear about are the troubles that have befallen your country and we seldom hear (or see) the many good things about the Holy Land. I was there many years ago for just a fleeting day visit and saw some wonderful sights - unfortunately I was not allowed to take photographs so was unable to keep a record of my trip. It would be fantastic if you were able to provide us with a slide show of the many places of interest. Please do not be afraid of using he obvious shots, I for one would appreciate seeing, e.g. the places along the route of the cross (you could use all the stations as a theme) and all the other things associated with it. Go for it Barbara, I look forward to seeing the final result. Ron West

Of all the tutorials available on this subject, one of the best is a CD available from www.beckhamdigital.co.uk. Have a look at this web site and see what you think. The CD is called 'Tips & tricks with PTE' Ron West

A picture size of 1024 x 768 pixels is fine if you intend your pictures to fill the screen. However, most photographs will look much better if presented with a small line around the edges and then displayed with a textured border on the monitor screen. e.g. on a monitor display of 1024 x 768 size your slide to say, 800 x 600 and stroke a white line around it's edge and show this on a black background. It will look better! Try it and see. Ron West

What is this 'Comcast' being used to upload slide shows. How does this relate to 'Beechbrook' ? Ron West

I second that suggestion! Boxig has some wonderful utilities available. I use his 'Autorun' all the time for my CD's and I can recommend the 'Remind me' utility - a sort of alarm clock that plays some music (of your choice) at a pre-selected time. Very useful! Ron West

Getting customers in the first place is hard enough these days, but when they will not either order from a proof CD or pay for what they want, life gets even harder. Just make sure that your proof photo's are low res pics so thay can't print out good copies and don't forget the PTE option to 'not allow printing'. Ken is right also, don't lose the customers you have by upsetting them. When Igor releases the next version, we will have a few more choices! Ron West

Great idea Alan Lyons, but I wonder if the folks out there will respond to your call. I certainly hope so because there are some really good people on this forum and when they put there minds to it, they can produce excellent results. Alan, I think that you have laid down 2 challenges here - (1) A history of a local castle and, (2) A Christmas Story. OK lads and lassies, go to it and let us see what you are made of! Tally Ho! Remember that it is not just a set of slides set to music that is wanted here; it is a story in pictures that will reap the rewards! Ron West

Hawk, thanks for the information on installing the *ico plugin. You were right! All that was needed was a re-boot. It all works fine now. Ron West

I have just picked up on this thread and am curious about this 'icon' thingy. Can somebody explain just what it is and how I would use it in PTE. I followed the link back to the oringinal thread - http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums//index...84&hl=icon+file and read all the comments made there. Alrobin was certain that photoshop could make these 'icons' and provided all that was required to obtain a plugin to be able to save the icon when made. I downloaded the plugin and now I am stuck! I tried cutting and pasting it into the Photoshop (CS) folder but still I was unable to save the file as *.ico because it simply did not appear in the 'save as' dialog box. Clearly I am missing something here, can somebody help please? Ron West

Hi Contaxman! My you are getting all het up about this 72/96 thing - calm down, 'it's only a commercial'. I am not sure that we should kill of this theory though, after all most of us tend to assume that 72 id the right thing to go for on a PC. In fact, I have several CD tutorials (from well respected authors) that suggest that this is the setting to use in photoshop when preparing a slide for a show in PTE. Perhaps you can offer your reasons for thinking that we should 'kill' the idea. I would just like to get it clear in my mind. Ronnie West

This threads has certainly cought the moment! To date there have been 411 views and 19 replies. What happened to the 392 people who viewed but didn't reply I wonder. I am gratified that this topic has produced such good help and advice, particularly from Alan Lyons, Contaxman and Gerard de Lux. I want to say a special thankyou to Kenneth (not Ken) for his contribution, at 74 years of age he has a lot of experience that he can share with us. Keep it coming folks! and thanks again. Ronnie West

I do realise that to print a large photograph will demand high resolution, but remember that my original question was about the resolution required for on screen presentation. PTE requires a file size to be quite small and the resolution would therefore need to be low. I believe that the accepted norm is just 72. It is also worth pinting out that most desktop (injet) printers will only require a resolution of 300 - anything more that that would be a waste. Is this right or wrong? Ron West

Great idea, but an awful lot of work. Maybe a little to much to expect, but we can but hope! Ron West

Informative and helpful replies, thankyou fella's! Interesting to note that you all seem to prefer the larger resolution in spite of the storage space. You have probably got big (gigabyte) hard drives. I accept that I have confused ppi with dpi - you would think I'd know the difference by now wouldn't you. I will get there one day. I'd be interested in seeing a demo of your experimenting with hi/low res shows Ken. Can you point me to a couple of slide shows, or maybe I shouldn't be so lazy and just produce a couple for myself. Please do keep on responding, we will all learn from these replies. Ron West

Thankyou Alan, I am glad that you are responding. I am keen to get involved with digital audio visual (I make the distinction because I realise that the old film based method is so different to digital). I am glad that you support the view that working to a script is the way to go. I am sure that you have more advice that you can offer us as well. Do you have any slide shows that you can point us to - either your own work or the work of others that you can recommend? Ron West.

I know that resolution has been the topic of discussion in this forum many times and I am sorry to bring up the question yet again. However, I am a little confused. I realise that the suggested resolution is 72 for a windows monitor or 96 for a Mac and most people will simply reduce their photo's down to this resolution in a photo editor, e.g. photoshop. A modern digital camera is capable of producing very larg resolution files and these not only fill your compact flash card very quickly but also take up huge amounts of hard disc space on you computer. If you know that you are taking pictures that will only be used for a PTE slide show, then there seems little point in taking hi-res shots at the taking stage. Is my thinking wrong here? or do you folks have a different view? In order to save space all round, why not take low-res jpeg shots to begin with? Ron West

There have been some good replies so far, thanks for getting involved. But let's think about the nitty gritty, starting with a need for a 'storyline', an agenda if you like. How many of you (like me) just search through your existing images and compile them in to a slide show? I am sure that the dedicated audio visual expert will first think about a story line and then go out and take the images required. Or am I on the wrong track here? Is there an expert member who can help out with this one, perhaps with a slide show that has been created already? Ron West

PTE is a wonderful piece of software and it is getting better all the time! Since I have been involved in making slide shows I have come to realise that the best shows are those that tell a story in pictures. The better the picture, the better will be the show. There are some superb examples on Beechbrook. Some of the best I have seen are those contributed by Barry Beckham (www.beckhamdigital.co.uk). Barry is clearly a 'prodessional photographer' because it shows. I wonder if we could discuss (in this thread) some of the ways in which you all take your pictures, e.g. do you always use the smaller apertures to keep a good DOF - do you just take the picure and worry about cropping later in photoshop. Also, how many of you use photoshop (or other image editor) to prepare slides for inclusion in your PTE show, I guess that you must because, otherwise how could you get the size of each image to be correct. (presentation) What I am really trying to say is this, 'please remember that you must be a reasonable photographer in order to produce a good slide show'. I hope to learn some good pointers from this thread, so please do join in. Ron West

'Ken Burns' I would like this to be added please. Zooming and scrolling, especially titles, would be a real advantage. If you can make it smoother than the competitors (Proshow Gold) then PTE will remain at the top of the heap for me. Ron West

Audacity is a great sound editor for the price (it's free) It works really well for all the basic stuff. I spend some time at my local hospital as a Radio Presenter and have found that I need a little more from the sound editor that I use. I used to use Soundforge for most of my work but have now switched to Adobe Audition. This program handles fade in and fade out and all sorts of other things as well. It cost quite a bit but is ideal for producing sound tracks and effects with PTE. Give it a try by downloading the trial version. Ron West