Slide Shows

[fur_babe]

I've been experimenting with a photo editor. One of the items is building slide shows.

 

I've put some up on a website for your enjoyment.

 

http://angelfire.com/ct/furbabe/

[ReFur]

Thank you, Carol!!

 

Linda

[Worker 11811]

Adobe Photoshop Elements has some very nice slide show creation features.

(That's Photoshop Elements as opposed to the standard Photoshop.)

 

I use the full Photoshop at work and Elements at home. I find that, 90% of the time, I don't need all the prepress and professional features that Photoshop has and Elements fits my needs very well. It's also a damn-sight cheaper. It can be had for under $100 U.S. as opposed to Photoshop's $600+ price tag.

 

I used to code my slide shows by hand using SMIL. (Synchronized Multi-media Interface Language -- A variant of HTML, streamlined for graphics.) Lately, I've found that Photoshop Elements' slide show creation features are much easier to use and they produce a nicer product with a lot less fussing around.

 

I produced the web tour of my Bears' Den using Elements. It's a very simple page with only six pictures in it but the program can make pages that are a lot more complex if you want. I made the site simple because I want to keep the bandwidth low. I want people who only have dial-up internet service to be able to see my stuff.

 

Which brings me to something else. I wanted to download your slide shows but they were both over 6 MB in size. I still use dial-up at home.

(I have internet access via T-1 at work but I can't use that for personal stuff unless I go there late at night. And, then, I have to be careful what I do. There is a rather restrictive Code of Conduct. If you know the kind of place where I work, you'll understand. )

 

When I get a good connection, my dial-up can download 1MB in 5-7 minutes. If I get a bad connection it can be a lot longer. Even with a good connection it would take me 30-45 minutes to download your videos.

 

If I had 768K DSL (The most common.) it would still take 1-3 minutes to download. With 1.5M service it will take about 1 minute. If you have 3M service (rare but becoming more common) it will take you under a minute. If I used the T-1 at work (hypothetically speaking) it would take me less than a half minute.

 

All I'm saying is that it would pay, in terms of the number of people who watch your slide shows, to consider bandwidth. The easier it is for people to download them the more people will see them.

 

I am in a CONSTANT battle with people at work who design graphics and web pages to keep bandwidth usage LOW! We have fast internet at work. We can do a LOT more things than the average person can. People design web pages and graphics that use HUGE chunks of bandwidth then they get frustrated when nobody visits their page(s). They think their site is great but they don't consider the "little guy". They get used to having all that bandwidth but forget that, even now, at least 50% of the people in the U.S. are STILL using dial-up for internet access!

 

To that end, I might suggest you use something other than Windows Media for your file format. Unless you tweak the files very carefully they will be unnecessarily large. You might find that you get better results if you use another format like QuickTime or even the "PDF Slideshow" that Photoshop Elements creates. (You can compress the living hell out of PDFs! )

 

If there is no nudity in your slideshows I might be able to go to work and download them on off-hours. I'm actually pretty interested to see what you've done!

[fur_babe]

I'm using the $100 version of Photoshop. Quite often Comp USA has a $20 rebate on this program. I got mine for $79.

 

Right now I have 2 shows. They feature furs from the 2005 and the 2006 haute couture fashion collections.

 

I agree that they are quite large. Each show has 8 to 10 slides and uses about 6 meg of memory. It's also on a free website and it is quite pssible that it will be suspended periodically for excessive bandwidth.

 

For me, this is a new learning experience.

[auzmink]

Carol

 

Very very stylish, thankyou. Could I perhaps say more. I think this sort of presentation every new Catwalk show would work wonders rather than all the 'clicking' and saving.

 

A career in it?

 

Auzmink

[Worker 11811]

I'm using version 2.0 because I have an older computer at home. You've probably got a newer version. They are up to ver. 4, now. Aren't they?

 

Under the FILE menu, there are several options for making web galleries and slide shows. With your newer version, you probably have more options for doing cool things than I've got!

 

Remember that most of the worldwide web operates at 72 dpi. (dots per inch) Many Windows-based browsers operate at 96 dpi. So, if you go any higher than 72/96 dpi you're wasting bandwidth. If you're just offering people pictures to look at then it will pay you to cut your resolution. Even if you offered 1,000,000 dots resolution pictures would look no better on the user's screen that can only display 72. It would just take up more space and take longer to download and it would fill up the user's screen.

 

If you're offering pictuers for download then things change. A person who wants hi-rez pictures is probably going to be more willing to wait for them to dowload. Thus, you can get away with bigger pics.

 

If you're just putting pictures up for people to look at and enjoy then use Photoshop to cut them down to about 500 pixels wide and about 300 pixels tall. (Depending on the aspect ratio of the picutre.) You can also turn JPEG compression up a litte higher.

 

Those pictures of my Bear's Den are 600 px wide @ 180 dpi. I compressed them at "9" out of "12". They take up a couple-few hundred KB each. On dial-up, they take less than a minute to download. (Approx 45 sec.) IF I resized them down to 500 px wide @ 72 dpi and cranked-up the compression to "6" (Compression in Photoshop is like a golf score. Lower numbers = more compression.) I could get them under 150 KB and they would take half as long to download.

 

But I love my Bears and I want to be able to download the pictures and print them out. So I made them just a little bit bigger so I can do that if I want. I sort of "split the differnece" in size to a "tolerable" wait for a "reasonable" amount of quality. (If I want the full quality pictures I can go back to the originals I have stored on my HD.)

 

There's your gambit. How much resolution are you willing to sacrifice versus how much bandwidth and waiting time are you or your viewers willing to tolerate?

 

I really am interested in looking at your pictures! I sprained my ankle last night, at work, so I'm not going in until later. If/when I get a chance to download your work I WILL look at it! If they are just fashion pictures, nobod will complain as long as I wait until later when the regular work is done and I can do it on off-hours.

 

I'll let you know!

[FurLoverinFL]

Thanks, Carol - you've done a terrific job!

 

FLinFL

[s1m17]

Very nicely done! Some great furs in there.

[Worker 11811]

Just checked out the videos!

 

MEOW!! 8)

 

I love that white Jean Louis Scherrer in the first video. (The second picture.)

 

And that long, brown Jean Paul Gauthier in the last two pictures of the last video is to die for!

 

Super Pictures!