Best way to get rid of black bars

[Andy_S Profile Private message]

Hi, I am wondering what techniques people use to avoid black bars at the sides of images when the image does not fill the screen?

[cherub Profile Private messageWebsite]

There are many ways, and mostly it depends on your imagination and, of course, your proficiency with the program.
The simplest method of all is to have a background of some sorts, that covers the whole screen.
It can be a video clip, or a colored background made in Producer - a gradient, or a solid color.
A decorative jpg from some place else....
Or a scan of something....
You can use a duplicate of your picture, blurred and at large sizes, and you can also move it around a bit to create some "action" in the background.
You can play with more than one duplicate - on each side of your main image.
You can make moving backgrounds of all sorts, using gradients, or your own pictures, by animating them in all sorts of ways.
For inspiration, have a look at the slide styles that come with the program, and slide styles made by others, and you will see what they do with a normal picture on a widescreen.
Hope this helps,

[DickK Profile Private messageWebsite]

The best way is to simply have pictures that are the proper orientation (landscape) and the right aspect ratio in the first place.

Oh, yeah, that might be impossible. Actually, I suspect that most of the time I don't do anything at all. All the "solutions" have their own problems so, ultimately, it's a choice of which less-than-perfect approach seems best. In my experience, these kinds of things bother me more than the audience. No one pays the black bars much attention because they're looking at the picture and sometimes my attempt at a "fix" simply draws attention to the very thing we want to not have them looking at.

Mona's approach fills in the black with something else and yep, I've used that. But it fixes one problem and leaves me picking something other than the picture to put there which might be distracting--or it might complement the picture really well. In fact, when I do that, I tend to zoom the picture out a touch and create a border all around for it to sit on and then find something that complements the image. I tend to use this only when the picture is something special because finding that "just right" background is often more work than I think it's worth, especially if I have to do it for a bunch of images and I can't use the same background item for most or all. But done well, it's great--even if the picture would fit fine, this can make an image 'feel' special.

Another approach is to crop the image to the right aspect ratio so it fits right. Zooming in so it fills the slide has the same effect, of course. Fine, if it works but we'll lose some image which might or might not be okay.

If the mismatch is small, a variation on these is to put the image in a frame--mostly useful if I can almost, but not quite crop the image to the right proportions. A slight mismatch will be covered by the frame. Again something I tend to use more to highlight an image rather than just disguise the aspect ratio mismatch but it does that as well.

Dick

[Andy_S Profile Private message]

Hi Dick, I am wondering which is the best way to go. I have already realised that adding a background image makes some transitions look poor and extra work is required to fine tune timings.

I think is a case of do I really want to spend hours trying for perfection when in reality the different aspect ratios of the users may still result in black bars...

Thanks

Andrew

[cherub Profile Private messageWebsite]

Hi Dick, I am wondering which is the best way to go. I have already realised that adding a background image makes some transitions look poor and extra work is required to fine tune timings.

I think is a case of do I really want to spend hours trying for perfection when in reality the different aspect ratios of the users may still result in black bars...

Thanks

Andrew

Andrew, you are right, a show requires some amount of work, and it all ends up with how much time you are willing to put into it.
As to the aspect ratio: You may have noticed that ProShow gives you two options: 4x3 Stardard TV and 16x9 Widescreen. If you give somebody a show made for widescreen and he has a 4x3 TV, he will see black bars. The opposite is also true. You could make two shows, one for each aspect ratio. Again, a question of how much time you want to invest in your show, and how important it is to you how your viewers watch your show.

[Jim Adams Profile Private message]

The entire series of "Backdrop" built-in slide styles does exactly what you ask for, Andrew. It takes an image, a shadow and a blurred version of that same image to completely fill the screen. Whether the photo is 3:2, 16:9, vertical or horizontal the outcome is always outstanding with no dead space.

Verticals are no longer a problem. They look great. My personal preference is the Backdrop Light Framed series, which places a white frame around the image against a high-key blurred version of that same image separated with a softened shadow layer. Sometimes a dark version is more effective. Or maybe you might prefer to eliminate the frame. No problem.

The really great thing about slide styles as opposed to transitions is that they are editable. You can change anything about them that you wish. The panning, zooming and 3D coordinates and percentages are all at your fingertips to alter. So are all the adjustments that determine the frame size and color, as well as the amount of blur and opacity in the background layer.

If you want to replace the background image with something else, it's also an easy change.
The built-in white borders are a bit too heavy for me so I just narrow them a bit by changing the vignette size.

Once you get as jazzed as I am about the power of this family of slide styles then you begin to see the different ways of transitioning between sequences of images and how that affects the look.

If you haven't tried these styles, give them a shot. If you have tried them and not been satisfied, give it another go.