The New "Wizard"

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The New "Wizard"

Postby jkuppens » Tue Dec 14, 2010 10:43 pm

Hi All.
I'm a wedding photographer and use PSP to make slideshows. They last between 30 & 45 mins and take me a day to may (8 - 10 hours). I would love to use the wizard to speed the process up and then fine tune it. I find the process is tricky as I just want to use a small amount of slide styles and transitions as most styles and transitions are way over the top for a wedding slideshow. Is anyone else able to modify the wizard (use there own selection of transitions and styles) successfully?
Thanks, John K
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Re: Customizing the "Wizard"

Postby cherub » Tue Dec 14, 2010 10:53 pm

You can customize the Wizard.
You can select which effects and which transitions the Wizard chooses from.
This is done by either creating your own theme from scratch, or by modifying an already existing theme.

Photodex has a good tutorial that explains exactly how to do this.


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Re: The New "Wizard"

Postby debngar » Wed Dec 15, 2010 6:43 am

John,

Customizing the Wizard to make your own theme is an option as Mona suggests or once you have a few shows made already that work well, an alternative would be to make templates out of several different shows and save those for future use. Photos can be dropped into the slides as you pick them to fill the slots.

I'd prefer to have more control over the presentation than leave it up to the Wizard in the case of a wedding or something that large. Photographing dogs I tend to shoot more portrait aspect images lately and those don't always display that well when the Wizard takes over without some further fiddling.

Once you decide you want to make a template out of a show, insert captions that note what kind of pictures/scenes belong in certain sections of the show, then save the template. Remove those notes when you use the template as you create the next show with it and start inserting pictures. A wedding should be easy since it has segments of activity distinct from each other.

Not sure which is going to be more of a time saver because either method, to me, takes time to tweak a bit here and there. The Wizard can make a quick show, yes but often at the expense of the design of the presentation which can make or break the emotion it's meant to go after in the viewer's heart.

I'd be curious to know which method you prefer if you happen to try both methods. :D
Debbie
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Re: The New "Wizard"

Postby heckydog » Wed Dec 15, 2010 7:09 am

Wow, 8-10 hours to do a wedding show.

I'd say that you've pretty well mastered the art. I literally spend weeks doing shows. :cry:

Joe

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Re: The New "Wizard"

Postby Ron » Wed Dec 15, 2010 7:01 pm

Wow, 8-10 hours to do a wedding show.
I'd say that you've pretty well mastered the art. I literally spend weeks doing shows.
Joe


Hi
I would have to agree with Joe also !!

I have a Question ? What do you want to streamline your work flow down to ? 4 or 5 Hours :?:
A Treasured Heirloom like a Wedding Show needs to be spot on.

A 30-45 minute Wedding show would consist of approximately 300-450 photographs. I would think just the post processing itself would take most 3-4 hours at an absolute minimum. As a Wedding Photographer I'm sure you want your photos to be the best they can be. That would leave only 2-3 hours do do everything else ... and everthing else is a lot that I won't list here.

IMHO your best play is to take Deb's great suggestion and create a Great Wedding Show and then save it as a Template, and then have that template in mind while photographing your next Wedding. This could be your solution to cut down your work flow time.

Bottom line IMHO ... One Day = One Show = Great Days Work ! :D
MERRY CHRISTMAS
Ron
"Family over Friends" "Night over Day" "Nikon over Canon" "Gravy over Everything"

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Re: The New "Wizard"

Postby jkuppens » Wed Dec 15, 2010 10:46 pm

Thank-you Cherub, Ron, Debgnar,

Post production takes around 5 days, with 1 day+ dedicated to the slideshow. I can live with the day it takes if I was getting the results I've seen from some of the brilliant slideshows I've seen on this and the Photodex site. In fact, I'm rather humbled by the amount of talent out there. I make about 35 slideshows a year, and have been using Proshow for 12 - 18 months. I've just ordered a bunch of training DVD's from Photodex, and look forward to viewing those. I utilize iTunes podcasts for keeping up with Lightroom and PS5, but there doesn't seem to be anything out there in that format for Proshow Producer. I would love to attend some of the training that Photodex make available, but O/S travel just isnt practical at the moment.
Cheers, John K
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Re: The New "Wizard"

Postby debngar » Thu Dec 16, 2010 8:28 am

jkuppens wrote:Thank-you Cherub, Ron, Debgnar,

Post production takes around 5 days, with 1 day+ dedicated to the slideshow. -snip-
Cheers, John K


Here's another thought on your wedding shows that might help a bit on the aspect of the time it takes to put them together.

Since you say these are 30-45 minutes long, I'm wondering if this includes every "keeper" image in the show. If that's the case, only including enough images to tell the story of the day might solve some "large" show obstacles.

* It reduces the need for finding enough music to cover that amount of viewing time.
* It keeps the viewer awake. Yes, family members can get bored watching their own 20+ minute shows!
* It edits out duplicate kinds of images that can cause the viewer boredom.
* It should take less time to create, edit, tweak and render due to less number of images in the show

I've done the same general Bethlehem Village show for 4 years but it still took me at least 16 hours (one entire day) to design that show which has about 100 images. To be fair I mostly try to only include one image of each person I photograph in my Bethlehem Village show production. Some of the main characters, like Joseph and Mary, need to be in there more than once to help move the story along. Including all 390+ "keeper" images would make it at least 3 times the length. I'd have a nightmare finding music to cover that time and people could become quickly bored watching it. So I leave some pictures out, regardless of how much I'd like to show them. People are more likely to view it multiple times if they know they don't have to schedule 20 minutes (or in your case 45 minutes) out of their time to watch the entire show.

This is why I say to make a (quality) story version of the best images and leave it at that. The show documents the memory of the event for clients to treasure. They will come back over and over again to watch without having to see 5 images of the same kind of shots over and over in the show. This doesn't restrict a client to what photos they might want to buy afterward that were not included in the show.

If you're intention is to show them every image (quantity), then throw all the images into a proofing show in the order of when they happened with AB transitions and some background music and forget about any other fancy effects. The less effects you put into a show, the less you have to tweak and the less time it takes to finish it. I would not rely on random transitions or random motion effects. IMO It's the pictures that stir a viewer's emotions anyways, not the effects.

That's just my personal call on it.

I'm still curious to know what you settle on as your best solution and hope you keep us posted. :D
Debbie
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Re: The New "Wizard"

Postby Pauline Collins » Wed Sep 07, 2011 5:33 am

Hi John. Gald to hear of someone else doing slideshows for weddings. I do too and have been for 4 years. I don't like using the Wizard as it is too flashy and I prefer to do each one individually as some imges are portrait and some landscape andhave to look just right. I take 2 -5 days, depending on the amount of imges.and how much time I spend tweeking. They run for approx 10 minutes using 3 songs. I use the main images to depict the
highlights of the day The"Style" feature makes it easier now and I have made a lot of my own Styles. I just love doing them for my 2 daughters who are wedding photographers. Cheers Pauline

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