Help needed for projecting digital nature slide show

[dick_ginkowski]

I am doing a presentation on digital nature photography.

 

I would like recommendations on which software to use. My images at

this point are either JPEG out of the box or converted to JPEG files

(from D60) at 2-3 mb each. They will be projected through a digital

projector. What software? What size should each image stored on CD

be?

 

Right now I have Corel Presentations on my own computers and access

to PowerPoint at work.

 

Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

www.pbase.com/dickg/

 

comments on web site also welcome<div></div>

[discus]

Hi Dick,

 

It all depends what you are trying to show!

 

If you are simply doing a "conventional" slide show, just resize the images to 1024x768 (I have yet to come across a projector with higer resolution than that) and then just put them full screen across the "slides" in powerpoint or Corel Presentations. In Powerpoint, I find the easiest thing is to use the background function to set the picture as the slide background. There is little point having images bigger than 1024x768, and it just takes excess disk space. The pictures will be incorporated into Powerpoint (I haven't played with corel, but it should be similar). If you install the pack and go feature on powerpoint, you will have a standalone .exe file that you can play on any windows machine.

 

Complex animations/fades get quite irritating after a while, so watch out on overdoing that.

 

If you are doing something more complex like illustrating the possibilities, then you have to show them onscreen - i.e. run the image editing app full screen to illustrate your point - that way you can zoom in and show quality and so forth and also how you might manipulate the images. You should be able to hook a monitor up to the projector, or if using a laptop view the laptop screen and still output the video to the projector, and thus face your audience whilst showing them what you are doing.

 

HTH

 

James.

[gary_berg]

BTW, if you have ThumbsPlus it can create an EXE file of the show. Also, there is a program called PicturestoEXE which does about the same.

[mike f]

I am doing a bit of this also and using Powerpoint extensively. I hope to find a program at some point that will let me have a selfstarting show with music. Currently I am running a conventional music CD in the CD drive as the show plays.

[craig_gillette]

Music and self-starting? Should be do-able in Powerpoint. The insert menu includes a section on inserting movies and music and the animation routines (I think) are where you set the run/repeat settings.

[mike f]

What about then burn it to a CD that someone without Powerpoint can put in their CD drive and see the whole show with music?

[craig_gillette]

PowerPoint will do that too (create a version for use where PP isn't installed). It's got a convenient wizard for doing that. It collects all the files into a single collection and, if needed, can add a run-time version that will "run" the show. What I wouldn't suggest is trying to save it as an older version to run on a computer with the old version (say you've got XP and they have 97). My daughter used PP for her 4th grade California project and making two files (an automatic show and one for click advance) was easy and transferred with little trouble to several school computers. Trying to make a "97" version from XP resulted in huge files that were several times larger.

 

Be sure to size the photos for screen viewing/projection before loading them to PP because the excess information will bog down the transfers and loading. I'd also suggest loading the presentation to the hard-drive of the computer being used as opposed to leaving it on the CD. CDs may not have the speed to keep up with the show whereas the drive should.

[michael_richard]

<a href="http://www.skymmemories.com">Photo slide shows</a> or you can get reviews of <a href="http://www.skymmemories.com/photo_dvd_slideshow_resources.php">photo slide show software</a>.