Photo`s from folder to Proshow Gold

by **Mike1** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 9:01 am

When I import the photo`s which I have arranged in My Pictures folder, Proshow Gold muddles them all up so they are not as I want them. Where am I going wrong? Regards Mike.

by **Captcurt** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 10:26 am

What do you mean by Muddles them up...are they out of order? Or differennt in some other way. What type of picture files are they?

Curt

by **Mike1** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 10:46 am

Hi Curt, Thanks for replying. I have the jpg photos of my holiday I want to use, sorted to a folder on my computer. I want to import them into Proshow Gold as they are in the folder, (ie: Date and time) so that the picture show is off the route we travelled over the 2 weeks. When I import them to Proshow they are not as they were in the folder,(Date and time). They import in a different order. Yet when I go back to the folder in My Pictures on the computer they are all still in the order I put them in. Thanks Mike.

by **BethS** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 10:59 am

try this......copy all of the pictures into another folder and simply number them 1, 2, 3 etc. Proshow will keep them in order. Or this might be a pain, in which case, ignore this.

Beth

by **gpsmikey** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 11:30 am

I'm not at my system right now, but I thought you could select in the
view options to sort by date ? I rename all my pictures with a name that
reflects the date/time stamp the picture was taken based on the EXIF
data, so my pictures do sort that way, but I think that like in windoze
explorer, you have the option to select the sort method.

mikey

by **Hayley** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 5:31 pm

Mike...I found this happened to me too...with 400 slides for my nana's 90th show. It took me forever to sort them into the right order and then proshow mixed them all up again. Time stamps wouldn't have worked for these as they were from all over her life time and many were scanned. I ended up doing what Beth suggested...but what a pain it was. I remember thinking why couldn't proshow just import them the way they were. There has to be another way.

by **gpsmikey** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 6:01 pm

Well, much as I hate to defend Photodex, I'm not sure this is their problem in this
case. I'm not sure just how they would read the sort order that windows was
viewing the files in (as you had arranged them). I know windows stores that
information somewhere, but I'm not sure. When you "move them around in a
folder" into an order you like, you have only updated a display list somewhere,
you have not actually changed anything about the files in that folder or the order
they are in inside the folder. If you were to look at the files in that directory with
a DOS command, you would find they were sorted alphabetically but with no
relation to anything you had done to order them in the folder. Maybe if I get
a chance I will see if I can figure out how windows stores the sort order when you
arrange pictures to your liking. I would suspect in some hidden metadata somewhere,
but don't know off hand.

mikey

by **DickK** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 6:22 pm

Mike1 wrote:When I import the photo`s which I have arranged in My Pictures folder, Proshow Gold muddles them all up so they are not as I want them. Where am I going wrong? Regards Mike.

You're not doing anything wrong--nor is ProShow. "My Pictures" is a unique folder that behaves differently from others because MS-Windows handles it differently. ProShow doesn't. An order you created in My Pictures is something that won't be known to another application because you didn't do anything permanent to the files to preserve the order. Maybe not the behavior you wanted but it's "as designed."

Okay, so what to do? Well, ProShow can sort the contents of the folder in several ways that work for me, however, like any normal folder with files in it, ProShow will sort the content by some characteristic of the file as it sees it. If you right click inside the PSG window with the thumbnails, you can select "details" which will show you the information it has about the files. Across the top will be a series of text labels on the bar... Name, File Type, Size, etc. Again, right click anywhere on that bar and you'll get a menu of all the things you can do to that list, including which details are selected to be shown and which are hidden. Of these, date and name are likely to be the most useful but there's a bunch of others you can select. If you click on any of the text labels the list of files will be sorted by that characteristic. Another way is to right click in the "details" window--a Sort By menu pick is now present and will show you more ways to sort the files. In any case, if you right click back inside the window with the details and switch back to thumbnails, they'll now be in the order you just sorted them.

(Mikey -- at least in PSG, the sort by list adds some but not the full range of EXIF tags.)

Now none of that may get you where you want which is to preserve an order other than name or date that you put them in outside ProShow but there's (to my knowledge) no way for PSG to know what you did out there. If filename, date or other order isn't close enough to what you want, and if this is important, then I think what you'll need to do is to arrange the files and then add something PSG can "see" -- most obviously something added to or replacing the file name. I'm aware of a couple applications that will let you view batches of thumbnails and sort them but I can't remember if any of them will then automagically replace the file names with, for instance, sequential numbers. It's brute force but you can do it manually by ordering them and then renaming each with a sequential number or letter/number sequence.

Dick

by **Captcurt** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 7:38 am

There is a utility freeware that will rename files as a batch inside a folder--I beleive it will preserve the order and rename to a serialized name--essentially what Beth suggested. Called Renamer from mediachance.com

You might try checking it out.

Curt

by **DickK** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 9:19 pm

Captcurt wrote:There is a utility freeware that will rename files as a batch inside a folder--I beleive it will preserve the order and rename to a serialized name--essentially what Beth suggested. Called Renamer from mediachance.com
You might try checking it out.
Curt

Yeah I thought of that too, but I don't think it will work. The trouble is that the OP wants to preserve a sort order that the renamer won't see--it doesn't exist outside the "My Pictures" folder. He's sorted them manually in "My Pictures" but the order there isn't based on filename or filedate or anything else attached to the file. I can't think of any way to preserve that order. next best thing is to find an application that does the sort and then has a rename function in it to preserve the order--I'm sure one exists tho' I can't think of anything that I know for sure does that. I don't remember that function in the Adobe Organizer that's bundled with PS Elements but maybe it can.

Dick

by **Captcurt** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 6:20 am

Yes, Dick,

I wasn't too certain it would do it either but worth a look. Perhaps best to just bite the bullet and start renaming them as beth suggested....1...2...3...4..

Been there...done that..!

Curt

by **xekester** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 10:13 am

Using the Thumbnail view, physically move the files to the desired sequence within the MyPictures folder window (i.e. move them on the screen display, not actually moving the files themselves), you can then multi-select all of the files you want to sequence (click the first one, and shift-click the last one). Then while all of the files you want are selected, right click the first one and select rename. Give the files a common root file name and windows will add a sequence number to the second and subsequent files names. Thus, renaming files as "picture" will result in fthe following filenames: picture, picture (1), picture (2), etc. Then, within ProShow, highlight the renamed files in the folder list window and drag them onto the timeline. This will preserve the order that you set in the My Pictures folder.

Alternatively, some photo organizing programs allow the designation of collections or sets of images, including the specific order for presentation. For example, PS Elements Organizer has a "Collection" feature for this very purpose. Create the collection there and drag-and-drop from the collection directly to the ProShow timeline.

Hope that helps,

John

by **gpsmikey** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 10:35 pm

Be very careful renaming pictures to "make them in the order you want" - if
they are copies of your masters, then you are mostly OK, however, if it is
a common folder etc that other shows might also reference, you could spend
weeks "unscrambling" the others that now have pointers to the wrong names
(I keep a folder for the pictures for each show as a sub folder for that show,
so it would not be as bad, but some people point to their master photos).

mikey

by **DickK** » Sun Nov 18, 2007 6:25 am

gpsmikey wrote:Be very careful renaming pictures to "make them in the order you want" - if they are copies of your masters, then you are mostly OK, however, if it is a common folder etc that other shows might also reference, you could spend
weeks "unscrambling" the others that now have pointers to the wrong names (I keep a folder for the pictures for each show as a sub folder for that show, so it would not be as bad, but some people point to their master photos).
mikey

Good point. That would be me and "been there, done that". Thankfully, I do regular, full backups of my image directory tree.

Actually, I've worked both ways but I didn't like having what can end up being several copies of an image laying around if I don't need to. I'll make copies of images that get edited for a specific show and keep those in a directory tree dedicated to shows and resources for shows. The bulk of my pictures stay in a general library. Lots of ways to organize and lots of variants on work-flow. Advantages and disadvantages to each I suspect and it seems more important to me that I found an organization and work flow strategy that works for me than just what that strategy was.

Dick

by **Mike1** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 8:36 am

Thanks for all the help. I have found a free program that re-numbers the jpg`s 1- whatever. It`s: "Faststone Photo Resizer". Dont forget to work on the copy folder, with all the copy files in. Worked well for me, Holiday disc is all done now, thanks to, Proshow Gold. Regards to you all and Merry Christmas. Mike.