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Computer and Technology |
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Creating Slide Shows from Digital Images
Phil made several announcements. He introduced himself as the new Chairman and Dick Curry as the Assistant Chairman. He expressed special thanks to Floyd Skelton for all of his good work and added that Floyd will still be around as web master (he is also Big Sir of Branch 116). He then introduced the officers and Board members of the group and all of the people who make the group work so successfully. The name of the group has been changed to Computers and Technology Group since we will experiment with holding meetings on different types of technology. For example, we are planning a session on Digital Video Recorders. Also we are considering a session on flat panel televisions. There will be 10 CTG meetings in 2007. (None in June or December). January, April, July and December meetings will continue to focus on Digital Photography. Meeting dues or contributions will be temporally suspended since our treasury has adequate money to cover expenses. Since we pay rent for the meeting room and pay for coffee and pastries we will have to reinstate the dues in a few months. Phil requested possible presenters to volunteer -- even for a short presentation, anything that might be of interest to the group. Next month Phil will present information about buying a computer that matches your needs. The volunteers for this meeting were: Refreshments Tom Bates; Coffee Masters Chris Satterthwaite and Vic Moore; Setup Chairman Lo McCarley with Bill Barnard, Don DeGraf and Bill Turnquist. Phil then turned the meeting over to Ken Haley who gave a terrific power point presentation entitled “Creating Slide Shows From Digital Images” This was a very thorough and excellent presentation consisting of 47 power point slides. Ken demonstrated many of the techniques live and displayed the actual results. This made it all much easier to grasp. Ken first talked about Simple Slideshows. The quickest and easiest one uses the “View as a slide show” command in Windows Explorer. This is useful as a quick preview. In another simple method he went to Control Panel/Display and selected “My Pictures Slideshow” as a screensaver. He then entered into a detailed presentation of how to create a slideshow in Photoshop Elements, starting with Tags and building the Collection. He then added Special Effects including video clips. The most dramatic additions to the Slideshow came from the use of Pan, Zoom, Music, Captions and Titles. The final step in the production was to Output the Slideshow for Computer or TV. The entire live presentation was two hours in length and it is was not feasible to cover it point by point. What follows are some highlights. It is not necessary or desirable to keep the slides in chronological order. Drag logical groupings of slides together. Look for photos that will introduce a new location or topic. Many compact digital cameras take decent quality video that can be included in the slideshow. Some cameras capture video in Quick Time (.MOV) format that must be converted to .AVI format. Ken included the reference to the free download site for RAD Video Tools to use for this conversion. The Slideshow is created in the Slideshow Editor feature of PSE Organizer. There is a storyboard across the bottom composed of thumbnails of your slides with transition controls between each. You select the type and duration of each transition. Blank slides can be dropped into the lineup wherever you wish to be turned into titles. Sound, music and or audio can be added. With a mike connected to the computer, voice can be recorded directly to provide captions for slides or narration for the slideshow. Likewise music that you have on your hard drive can be added. The finished slideshow can be rendered for showing on your computer monitor or on a TV. Computer monitors often have much better resolution than conventional TV. Thus, the slideshow will often look best on a monitor, particularly if the monitor is set to utilize its maximum resolution. Video CDs for use in a DVD player feeding a TV produce low quality images. Video CD technology is out-dated and primitive—use a computer monitor instead. Burning the slideshow to a DVD creates a good image on a conventional TV, and the same quality image on HDTV. A DVD is a good choice for showing images to a larger group. |