Arranging slides

Post your tips & tricks here for creating slide shows with ProShow Gold. This could include suggestions for style and content in addition to working with the software itself
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Arranging slides

Postby jennifer5983 » Sun Feb 03, 2008 12:59 pm

Curious on what the proper filename procedure is to eliminate rearranging of slides when pulling them into a show. I arrange the order of my slides in my photo editor, then when I import them into my slideshow, they rearrange themselves. Is there a way of forcing the order of the slides, so I don't have to redo it?
Thanks much!
Jennifer

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Re: Arranging slides

Postby BarbaraC » Sun Feb 03, 2008 1:20 pm

jennifer5983 wrote:Is there a way of forcing the order of the slides, so I don't have to redo it?


Yup. Rename the pictures by adding either numbers or letters of the alphabet to the front end. I use letters so it ends up as A-Picture1, B-Picture2, and so forth. When I reach Z, I go to AA, AB, AC, etc. When you pull all the pictures into a show, they'll fall neatly into alphabetic (or numeric) order.

Barbara

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Arranging slides

Postby jennifer5983 » Sun Feb 03, 2008 3:58 pm

Thanks Barbara - much appreciated!
Jennifer
Jennifer

BigAl

Postby BigAl » Tue Feb 05, 2008 9:22 pm

Renaming files

When you download your photos from your camera you have file names like “DSC1002.jpg” or something that does not mean much to you.

I have found the easiest way to fix the problem is to download the camera into a directory (file folder) which I call “download”. I try to download often so I do not have several trips at the same time but that is not a real problem.

At this point I immediately rename the files and start to organize them.

I first open “Word” and enter what the first file name will be. For example if I went on a cruise in Jan 08 I would normally group the entire cruise photos into one file folder when all done. If I take photos of the grandkids I would move them after renaming them.

So for the cruise photos I would type 8 (year) 1 (month) C (cruiseline) (subject) 101 (first number) and R (raw file).jpg so it would look like this “81C101R.jpg”.

Learning “hot keys” is a good thing and you can do “Ctrl A” (all) which highlights your entry. Then hit “Ctrl C” (copy) which copies it to your clipboard and then change your view to Windows Explorer where you have your photo files in the “download directory”. Do not close your “Word File”.

You can right click the first photo and select rename and then hit the “Ctrl V” (paste). Your first file is now renamed. I do this to the next photo in order but I then change the last number from 101R to 102R and do this until I get to 109. At that point I go back to Word and set my original entry to read “81C110R.jpg” and I am good to go changing only the last number to each Photo till I get to “81C119R.jpg” and then change the Word again to keep going.

Using the hot keys I can rename a hundred files in less than 15 minutes and if you want to change the order as you are looking at the thumbnails you have no problem in arranging them.

When doing the grandkids I use their first initial for the subject such as if I took a photo of Bryce in Feb 08 I would start like this “82B101R.jpg”.

Keeping the file names under 8 characters is good for the space used on your computer.

Now I correct all of my photos using PhotoShop. I never correct (and save) the Raw file. I always make my corrections TO the Raw file and then do “Save As” and I simply remove the “R” from the file name, which creates a new file. When I am done I simply take all of the Raw files and put them in a Raw file directory and when I get enough I put on storage DVD.

The corrected files I then take from my “Download” directory and put in the directory to which I want to save.

I personally feel that if you make changes to your original (RAW) photo and later see you need to change something you might be out of range and you can always go back to your file in storage.

It takes a little bit of getting use to but if you try it I am sure you will like it.

Hope this helps.
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Postby Auster » Wed Feb 06, 2008 6:53 am

If you want a quick way to rename all the files in one folder, open Windows Explorer, New>Folder>drag all the files into the order you want in the folder,>Ctrl A(to select All),> hit F2> type in the name you want the file to be named, (e.g. proshow wedding trial), and all files will have been renamed and given a number (e.g. proshow wedding trial 1,2 ...).

Hope this helps.
Auster

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Renaming Files

Postby jennifer5983 » Wed Feb 06, 2008 11:15 am

Thanks to all who have so graciously responded!
Jennifer

hootowls

Re: Arranging slides

Postby hootowls » Wed Aug 13, 2008 4:20 am

Jennifer -

I am using Irfanview more and more to arrange my images. Irfanview is a free-ware program and the new version has added some wonderful features for organization. It is a media viewer (will show almost all image types still and moving), simple editor, and very simple slideshow program. Make sure you download it from their site because there are some frauds. http://www.irfanview.com/

I am going to give a quick overview of my process. if you have questions or need further details, write me back.

When I start a slide show, I set up folders from Windows Explorer in broad categories of how I will organize my show. For example, for a birthday party show, I would set up folders called "decorations before", "guests arriving", "party activities", "cake", "presents", and "Misc." I then view all my images in Irfanview one at a time and use the "F8" function to copy the images I will use to the correct category not copying any image with problems. The "F8" allows up to 14 folders to be quickly selected and used. Then using the Thumbnails feature of Irfanview (a light table view), I view each folder and organize or group the images further. You can make the thumbnails bigger. Use the lossless function to rotate any images as needed. Move the images in the order for your show. Then do a "ctrl-A" or select all and start the batch processing to rename all the images in the new order. Once I reach this point, I use Irfanview to print a contact sheet of each folder. I have discarded entire folders at this point deciding the images contained in that folder do not fit with the focus of the show. I will carry the contact sheets around making notes and selecting images to use. I then start the PSG process.

There is a list of tutorials under FAQ on their web page.

The only downside I have found with this process is that it eats hard drive space because you have 2 copies of these images.

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