Saturday, February 19, 2005
PHOTOGRAPHY "GALLERY" SITES OF INTEREST:
Jesus Rodriguez
This Spaniard has an interesting site with great photos of European landscapes, etc.
Jeremy Turner:
An excellent site with many great photographs. Check out his "links" page for an entry into many other photography sites and even a "webring" featuring photo sites.
Gary Tonhouse:
Lots of great images here, plus many helpful hints and links.
Jesus Rodriguez
This Spaniard has an interesting site with great photos of European landscapes, etc.
Jeremy Turner:
An excellent site with many great photographs. Check out his "links" page for an entry into many other photography sites and even a "webring" featuring photo sites.
Gary Tonhouse:
Lots of great images here, plus many helpful hints and links.
Friday, February 18, 2005
Microsoft's Windows Media Player, version 10
I've always been a fan of WMV---it's a freebie, and for the most part works well. It keeps getting more competent. Several other programs require the latest version, and so here's a link to downloading this. One person said she had problems getting it to accept some sort of registration code. I found that it installed directly without fuss on my computers.
Digital Imaging Resource:
Yet another camera review site. I read one review, found it fairly comprehensive, with a lot of sample shots from their gallery. It's not quite up to my favorite, www.dpreview.com, but there's reason to know about more than one site.
I've always been a fan of WMV---it's a freebie, and for the most part works well. It keeps getting more competent. Several other programs require the latest version, and so here's a link to downloading this. One person said she had problems getting it to accept some sort of registration code. I found that it installed directly without fuss on my computers.
Digital Imaging Resource:
Yet another camera review site. I read one review, found it fairly comprehensive, with a lot of sample shots from their gallery. It's not quite up to my favorite, www.dpreview.com, but there's reason to know about more than one site.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Microsoft's Photo Story version 3
When I bought version 1 of this software, I thought that $20 was a fantastic deal. Well, for FREE you get a program which is many times more robust!
Version one allowed you to string together your photos, allowing "panning and zooming" motions, true fade-in-fade-out transitions, your own narration and music background which it then "rendered" into a slide show.
Version three does all of those things plus a whole list of important improvements and additions:
1) an excellent browser allows you to see your pictures in any folder before choosing to include them in your project. By holding CTRL-key down whilst clicking with the mouse, you can select all that you want
2) it allows for picture corrections, even after the photos have been put on the timeline. It'll do these individually or in a batch file! Corrections include but are not limited to rotations, cropping, red eye, and various exposure/balance/contrast adjustments
3) it allows for a whole range of transition effects, not limited to the most popular true fade-in fade out
4) as before you can vary the timing of each slide, and make your own narration by recording into your microphone. Unlike before, you can make notes BEFORE you start recording to assist you in a smooth verbal presentation!
5) you can select the way in which the program pans or zooms or both. But unlike version one, this is ultimately variable
6) you can select background music: this time, it includes various themes or moods and CREATES a midi selection of your tempo and length to fit your movie, OR you can use any digital sound track and associate it with particular slides. Unlike version one, you can have MORE THAN ONE soundtrack background. You select the slide and pick a new sound file. It fades the first, seques into the second---very smooth!
7) you can save your movie in a variety of resolutions depending upon your need and space requirements. Unlike version one, however, it allows saving at 1024x768 resolution (this is visibly better than DVD format, folks) without downloading a special file.
All-in-all, this was a very neat simple program, and now it's become a very powerful program, which can be as simple or complicated as you want it to be.
When I bought version 1 of this software, I thought that $20 was a fantastic deal. Well, for FREE you get a program which is many times more robust!
Version one allowed you to string together your photos, allowing "panning and zooming" motions, true fade-in-fade-out transitions, your own narration and music background which it then "rendered" into a slide show.
Version three does all of those things plus a whole list of important improvements and additions:
1) an excellent browser allows you to see your pictures in any folder before choosing to include them in your project. By holding CTRL-key down whilst clicking with the mouse, you can select all that you want
2) it allows for picture corrections, even after the photos have been put on the timeline. It'll do these individually or in a batch file! Corrections include but are not limited to rotations, cropping, red eye, and various exposure/balance/contrast adjustments
3) it allows for a whole range of transition effects, not limited to the most popular true fade-in fade out
4) as before you can vary the timing of each slide, and make your own narration by recording into your microphone. Unlike before, you can make notes BEFORE you start recording to assist you in a smooth verbal presentation!
5) you can select the way in which the program pans or zooms or both. But unlike version one, this is ultimately variable
6) you can select background music: this time, it includes various themes or moods and CREATES a midi selection of your tempo and length to fit your movie, OR you can use any digital sound track and associate it with particular slides. Unlike version one, you can have MORE THAN ONE soundtrack background. You select the slide and pick a new sound file. It fades the first, seques into the second---very smooth!
7) you can save your movie in a variety of resolutions depending upon your need and space requirements. Unlike version one, however, it allows saving at 1024x768 resolution (this is visibly better than DVD format, folks) without downloading a special file.
All-in-all, this was a very neat simple program, and now it's become a very powerful program, which can be as simple or complicated as you want it to be.
