Photo Colleges

[flvideo]

You guys that do that all the time give me some tips. I have to do a memorial for a member of my church that passed away. I need to know such things as how long to keep each photo on the screen, should I just use crossfades or is it appropriate to use a little more glitz. Any tip would help. Also I need some appropiate music, titles? Thanks in advance. Bob...

Also what is the best way to get the pics in my Renommee? I have to scan about 35 pictures into my PC and I'll make jpegs out of them. I have photo studio 2.

[videojim]

First off, I thought you were discussing places to go and learn about photography, because what you are trying to create is a collage, not a college. Second, PhotoStudio2 is your ticket. Take a look at the tutorial (maybe Chet has one if you don't) on it and you will learn all you need to know. Basically put your pics in on a disc, bring up PhotoStudio2 in the special menu( after you have set up a new project with a name), and then you can import your pics to PS2, create scene (4 seconds is plenty long enough, unless you zoom in or out, or pan across it). That "scene" u just created then shows up in your scene bin, and you take it from there, with whatever transition, titles, suit you. Take a good long look at the tutorial, tho, as there's a lot in it, and it may take more than one good look to get it all in. Usually, I have the training DVD right next to my Renomee and its screen, so I can stop the training DVD, and do what it talks about. This gives me confidence that I can actually do what it shows. Hope this helps!

[videojim]

PS2 is just going to create material in your scene bin, so you can make a video of it, doing that the way you always have. PS2 will do some moving around, and zooming, and you have to play with those lengths to make them look right. Find out what music the deceased person liked that seems appropriate, or that you think is good for this.

[flvideo]

Thanks Jim I will see if Chet has a tutorial. Is 4 sec enough? the Transition will take some of that. I will call the family tomorrow and see what kind of music he liked. I am going to be running tight on this I have a 1/2 day tomorrow with 1 client and I plan on starting when I get done with him. I have to deliver it Wed. morning. A lot of time HUH? I may have to burn some midnight oil tomorrow. Thanks agin Bob...

[CasablancaExpert]

Bob,

Sent you some suggestions off-list along with a couple of tutorials.

You may also wish to check-out the Casablanca Webinar Archives on my website here:
http://www.casablancaexpert.com/categories/webinarpost

Scroll down to:
Casablanca Webinar - General Session #3
Held Tuesday 3/31/09
and check out the 24:00 streaming video titled "Part 1 of 3 : Creating a simple photo montage - using PowerKey and the new Auto-Transitions Options"

Hope that helps!

Regards,
Chet

[flvideo]

When I pulled this up this morning I noticed I miss spelled Collage. Boy what a difference a letter makes. I have a ecuse, this puter is old and it don't smell good. Bob....

[pdjohnson]

Bob, just a suggestion. We do a lot of photo montages and we find that with the transitions, less is better.... we use crossfades 99% of the time. You can get a little fancy with the intro, but when you are watching lots of pictures, you get distracted with a lot of different transitions.
We ask the family what kind of music the person liked. We just did one with dixieland music that the family provided and I thought they would hate it, but it was actually pretty good. They really loved it!

Pauline and David

[flvideo]

Thank you David. I met with the customer this afternoon and she brought me some music so thats good and I showed her a couple transitions and she liked the page turn. I also showed her some animated backgrounds and she liked the sky slowed down about 1/2. I do have a problem. I have 2 of her pictures that my Renommee won't see. I have tried every thing I can think of and they just won't go in. They are JPEGS as the other 60 are that went in without a hitch. I told the customer and she's ok with it so push come to shove I'll leave them out. I may get into more of these if this goes good. I can see a whole new revenue stream here, and I have enjoyed putting it together. Thanks again Pauline or David or both. Bob...

[IanPearson]

Bob
With respect to your two photos that your Renommee will not read, it could be one of three reasons.

Firstly with PS2, it will only recognise photos that are saved in *jpg format, if they are JPEG, they will not be seen by PS2. You can “save as” on your PC, in the required format.

Secondly, they need to be in at least 24Bit colour, better still 48Bit. Even if they are black and white photos, they will again need to be "saved as" colour photos.

And thirdly they must be of a certain size resolution. I’m not sure what the minimum resolution size is, but anything over 500 X 375 will be seen, but not necessarily of sufficient size to be animated. I usually take photos of at least 2048 X 1536, or if scanning I use a resolution of at least 300dpi. This will enable transfer and animation, no problem.

You can enhance low resolution photos as below, using Adobe Photoshop or some other good photo program. Although they can never be enhanced to the quality of a high resolution scan of an original photo, they can be improved using Photoshop, such that they can be used in PS2 animations or reasonable print quality.

After opening the graphic with Adobe Photoshop, (Photoshop 8 in my case) carry out the following:-

1. When opening the program, a dropdown box may appear, select “Assign working RGB
2. From the top menu select “Filter” – “Video” – “De-interlace”. In the “Eliminate” option , Select “Odd fields” and in the “Create new fields by” option select “Interpolation” – “OK”.
3. From the top menu select “Image” – “Adjust” – “Levels” and set the “Input levels” box 1 to 16 and box 3 to 235 – “OK”
4. From the top menu select “Image” – “Adjust” and set the brightness, colour, saturation, etc, as required. – “OK”.
5. Again select “Filter” – “Sharpen” and sharpen the image as required.
6. Select “Image” again – “Image size” and in the “resolution box enter a value of at least 300dpi – ”OK”. Ensure “Constrain proportions” is un-checked.
7. Finally “Save” or “Save as”, give the file a name, file extension *jpg and set the options to “max” – “OK”

The above enhancement process was originally supplied by Lou, although I have modified it slightly. I often use this process when I want to increase the resolution of a still frame from a video scene.

Hope this is of use.

Ian

[flvideo]

Ian I scaned them in as a JPEG, I scanned them in as color, they both are color pics. They were scanned at 300DPI. They were never processed by a computer program. In fact one of the pictures I sold the family about 3 years ago. I know the histoy of that one for sure. The other one was probably 40 years old and was just a home photo probably developed by walgreen or walmart. The old one is 736x512 and the other is 1536x1247. I thought about down sizing them at least the newer one. I had an issue with PS2 with another project some time ago where the resolution was too high on a pic I was trying to put into my Renommee. I reduced them a bit and they went in with out a hitch. I have left those two pic's out. I am printing labels on the copys now. This was a rush job. I got the pictures yesterday and I had to be done this morning. The DVD will be at the viewing this afternoon at 1 PM. My customer is on the way to pick them up now. I would like to try to find out what the problem was so next time I'll know what to do. I have another question. If I am going to do this stuff I need to hone my skills. The pic's I scanned in were all of varing sizes and orientation. I resized them all to fit the screen but the orentation of some prevented me from filling the screen with picture. Is there any way, short of croping each one in Photo Shop, to make them fill the screen? I guess if theres enough money there it would be advantagious to crop each one. In this case I wouldn't have had the time to enhance each photo. Thanks Bob....