Newbie Question: Templates and Styles

[ianbutty Profile Private message]

Hi
I'm new to this forum... so first let me introduce myself. I started using PSG for about 2.5 years and in the last year upgraded to PSP. I'm aware that I'm probably not producing my slideshows in the most efficient way possible and would like to try to get some advice to point me in the right direction.

I am professional photographer doing theatre photography (for amateur groups) and need to produce a slide show of all the photos taken durring a performance. It is important that the photos are displayed in the order in which they were taken. From any given production there may be anything from 80 - 200+ images. (Usually about 150 images). Typically there is about a 50/50 split between vertical (portrait) format images and horzontal (landscape) format images. From production to production there is no way of guessing the sequence of horizontal vs vertical images - totally random as the individual image dictates.

I currently have a 'format' for the PSP slide shows which the customers like, where the landscape images are scaled to *fill* the frame and about 50% of them have subtle motion effects. The vertical images are scaled to *fit* the frame and typically don't have motion effects applied to them.

At the moment I don't use templates or slide styles to achieve this. Process is roughly as follows...
1. Import images (default scaling fit the frame).
2. Manually select all the landscape images and set their scaling to fill the frame.
3. Manually select about 50-70% of the landscape images and randomise the motion effects.
4. Go through the slide show adjusting the motion effects on about 20% of the slides to which the random motion was applied to make it a little more subtle.
5. Add title slides, credit slides and music

I have looked at creating a template to try to simplfy the process but I've never found a way to create any template that significantly improves the process of creating the show due to the fact that I treat vertical and horizontal images differently and the need to display all images in the order in which they were taken. (ie I cannot drag horizontal images in horizonal slots in the template and vertical images into vertical slots as that would almost certainly result in images out of sequence).

Now we have slide styles in v4 - I've been looking into applying slide styles, but I have not found a way to apply a style to multiple slides in one go.

Looking at the provided styles and templates I really like the idea of using frames round images. However if I apply a style with a frame AFTER setting a random motion to the image layer applying the style removes the motion and replaces it with the motion saved in the style. If I apply the style first and THEN set up a random motion the border layer gets the motion too, thus spoiling the effect of the image moving under the frame.

At the moment it takes me a couple of hours in PSP to produce a slide show of a theatre production, so it is only cost effective to produce slide shows for productions with large casts when I know I have enough sales potential to cover the time spent in producing the slide show. In theory templates and styles are supposed to stream line this kind of job but I haven't yet been able to find a way to do that.

Any advice suggestions or even example templates that cope with a random selection of image orientations would be welcomed.

Thanks,
Ian M Butterfield
http://www.imb.biz

[Ron Profile Private messageWebsite]

Hi Ian
I'd like to welcome you to the forum - as you read through past threads you'll see there is a wealth of information here to overload your brain. Anyway regarding your question, I find it impossible to create a cookie cutter template to totally streamline a show. As you stated with portrait vs. landscape and then add a specific order I think creating a show in 2 hrs. is FANTASTIC. I'd spend much more than 2 hours in the imaging processing mode before I even get to Producer. I can't speak for everyone but being a detailed type person not one show that I've created was cost effective. This doesn't stop me from doing them as I accepted it is what it is. I remember a show when I calculated my hourly rate, it was less than minimum wage, and never did that again. But if you can produce a show with 150 photos in 2 hrs. & the clients are happy then I think you found the perfection of time that your looking for...
Anyway thats my 2 cents as I hope I made sense.
Again welcome to the group & I'm sure you'll hear from some of the other members with their point of view.
Happy Holidays
Ron

[pd Profile Private message]

Ian,

As Ron has intimated (maybe not in so may words). you do not need a template.
I do not know anything about theatre photography but you have a workflow which appears very time efficient.
I take it you have not included the post work in say photoshop. Small adjustments, in levels, shadow adjustmens and so forth will take you a couple of minutes at best. So 100 x 2 minutes. Then producer, 100 x 30 seconds each.
Adding music, going through it to review and back to tweak it etc etc.
I think I would stick to what you are doing right now.

pd

[ianbutty Profile Private message]

Ian,

As Ron has intimated (maybe not in so may words). you do not need a template.
I do not know anything about theatre photography but you have a workflow which appears very time efficient.
I take it you have not included the post work in say photoshop. Small adjustments, in levels, shadow adjustmens and so forth will take you a couple of minutes at best. So 100 x 2 minutes. Then producer, 100 x 30 seconds each.
Adding music, going through it to review and back to tweak it etc etc.
I think I would stick to what you are doing right now.

pd

Thanks for the replies.

Certainly NOT counting the time in Lightroom/Photoshop to process and tweek the images - I have to do that anyhow to be able to be able to offer the images for sale as prints. (Lightroom really comes into it's own there... providing the lighting is consistent accross a whole scene of a play - process on image from the scene apply setting to the rest!). The 2hrs (ish) is the time I'm spending in Producer - this assumes that all the images are ready to go, and named in a such a way that I can pull them in to the show in correct chronological order. Nor does the 2hr include burning disks, labeling and creating dvd case covers.... it doesn't include finding suitable music either but am building up a supply of music that is legal to use now.

I think what would really help is if anyone can tell me how to apply a style to multiple slides - most other settings can be applied to all selected slides but I've just not worked out how to do that with styles.

Thanks
Ian.

[pd Profile Private message]

Hi Ian,

That a relief. You are human after all.

I think what would really help is if anyone can tell me how to apply a style to multiple slides - most other settings can be applied to all selected slides but I've just not worked out how to do that with styles.

I understand you have Producer 3.something.
Basically you go to Show> Show Templates> Open Template
and Load a suitable template. The name might indicate what that template does. (Choose one which has a short time for a starter)
Basicaly you go into the layers tab and insert your photo\s in the empty layers. Then play. When ready save it psh.
You can then insert this into another show or continue building on it. It is overwhelming initially as I have discovered to my own expense. BTW make a quick search and you will find several free templates available within this group.
Hope this helps, if not, call again.

pd

[ianbutty Profile Private message]

I think what would really help is if anyone can tell me how to apply a style to multiple slides - most other settings can be applied to all selected slides but I've just not worked out how to do that with styles.

I understand you have Producer 3.something.

Hope this helps, if not, call again.

No it's the V4 slide styles that I'm strugging with. I only found out about and upgraded to v4 yesterday so I've not had much chance to get to grips with it, and find out where Photodex have hidden the controls this time! (It took me months to find out that applying motion styles to all selected slides whas hidden on a right click of the dropdown box! Not exactly industry standard! It's worse than trying to find easter eggs on a DVD!)

I think I have a solution to speeding up my work flow but I need to be able to apply slide styles to muliple slides to do it. At the moment the only thing I've been able to do is select individually and apply the style to it. Can't find where they've hidden the "apply to all selected slides" options for this.

The solution I'm working on is to create a template setup for all the horizontal images (including the motion effects borders, title slides, music etc) import all the photos in order. Then go through locate the vertical images which don't display correctly and apply a default "vertical" style to those. But for the system to be any quicker than what I currently do I need to be able to apply the style to a whole bunch of selected vertical images in one go.

Regards,
Ian.