Coffee Table Book + DVD

[courtneykahn]

Looking for recommendations for top quality coffee table book that allows for maximum flexibility wrt

layout - photo size, # of photos on page, placement of photos on page etc.

 

I have seen WHCC and DigiLab mentioned. Any isues with either? Any others I shld consider?

 

Also looking for referrals on turning iPhoto slideshows (would like to keep Ken Burns effect) with music

into DVD. I am not satisfied with the resolution when burning myself...also cannot keep the Ken Burns

effect using iDVD (seems like a ridiculous technical limitation). Surely there is a way to produce a high

quality DVD of an iPhoto slide show. Any suggestions?

[buckry]

Is there such a thing as high quality DVD? We're talking about TV's here, they're not really capable of high quality.

[toddcwilson]

http://asukabook.com

 

As for the slide shows, I'm still trying to work that one out as well.

[bdp]

Asuka is great, GraphiStudio also is really nice with more sizes than Asuka (square only) offers

[jim_forrest]

Re the dvd and slide show: When I export to IDVD the Ken Burns effect is fine but what happens is the transition times are all out of sync with the music.....finally I'm afraid I've given up and I thinks Photo Majico seems to be the way to go.

 

Jim

[jefferson_todd_pals]

Choose "Send to iDVD" from the Share menu in iPhoto. It will send the iPhoto slideshow (w/

ken burns effects) to iDVD for burning. You can't get any better resolution than this way

when using iPhoto.

[courtneykahn]

Ryan...re no possible high quality DVD...I guess so. I am dumbfounded in this day and

age. Thx for reconfirming what I had heard from others.

 

Todd...Asuka looks amazing. That's the high end quality I was looking for. Thx. Re slide

show, someone recommended www/showitfast.com.

 

Jim and Jefferson...re Ken Burns, perhaps I am unclear...I wld like to see the same random

movement of the image, in addition to the transition, that I see in iPhoto slideshow. When

I use the share menu to send from iPhoto to IDVD, I do not get the movement...only the

transition. The movement is key to the impact, in my opinion. Would either of you be

able to confirm that you get the random movement in your DVD's?

 

Thank you everyone for your suggestions...I will check them out!

[trenternst]

When you say high quality, do you mean HD quality? There are burners starting to come

on the market, but I don't know how they'll interact with Mac, especially since Apple threw

their hat in the bluray ring.

 

DVD quality is 480 p, which means the size is basically 640X480 pixels on a screen.

Considering that a 5X7 print has about 10 times that resolution (unless my math is

freakeshly off), of course you'll be disappointed by a DVD.

 

If you're worried about quality, though, why are you using iPhoto to control your slide

show? Pop over to iMovie, and you have a tonne more of control over how things look and

feel. And if you're really a bug for quality, you can do it as a High Def movie, then instead

of outputting to iDVD, output to H264 at 1080 p, and show it to your clients on your

computer.

 

Assuming your computer has the juice to play said 1080 p file....

 

It will take longer, but once you figure out iMovie's quirks, you'll be much happier. I don't

know how iMovie 08 treats slideshows, though, so you might want to stick to iMovie HD....

[courtneykahn]

Hi Trent,

 

Thx. I am a fanatic about quality. Wld love to show my client his/her slideshow on my

laptop, but need to be able to provide them with a vehicle to look at his/her slideshow on

his/her own. Am open to whatever vehicle provides that quality.

 

For slideshows that clients can access, I bought showitweb software which gives me the

ability to zoom and pan randomly - a requirement me like iPhoto - but am disappointed in

the translation to web color...images lose some punch. Other than that, it seems have a

lot of customization, is easy to figure out and has a simple, clean, professional look.

 

Am somewhat new at this and need to understand what I have to do on my end to prepare

images for web. I'll post a question on that.

 

Thx again for your suggestions.

[trenternst]

Hey Courtney.

 

Just got involved in a discussion about colour management for print and web over here:

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00MK53

 

As discussed over there, when looking at images outside a colour managed environment,

the defacto standard is sRGB. It is a narrower colour gamut than what photographers

usually use to output images, and so when you take a colour managed image in

photoshop and look at it in a non-colour managed environment, a bunch of colours go

missing.

 

I don't use iPhoto, or showitweb, but I do use photoshop and Lightroom. Lightroom is

great, because you tell it to export to web, and it will do all the heavy lifting for you.

Photoshop, if you take an image that is Adobe RGB or Pro Photo and you tell it to export to

web, it will just dump the colours that are outside of sRGB, and the photo looks as bad as

if you hadn't bothered converting it.

 

What you need to do is, back in photoshop, open up a COPY OF YOUR ORIGINAL FILE!!!

(that's important). Then go under Image:Mode:Convert to Profile, and convert to sRGB.

Convert looks at how the colours currently display, looks at the space your putting the file

into, and does its best to preserve the colours in the destination space. (The other option,

Assign profile starts ditching colours again. Hello? I want those colours)

 

Save this new file as your slideshow/web version of the file. This *should* make all things

better. Of course, this is a bit of voodoo, and is best learned from someone wiser than I.

Real World Colour Management is a great book, but if you bang your head against the wall

long enough, you'll crack your skull open and the knowledge will flow in. Or your brains

will flow out.

 

Good luck. Try doing a short slideshow in iMovie and see how it works for you. Play

around with conversions. It's something I've played a bit with, but I am certainly no expert,

though I play one on TV.