Workshop 1

This is a very simple introduction on how to create a slide-show in P2exe.

1. Identify images that are to appear in the slideshow. These must be in digital format or converted by scanning them into digital format.
    
2. Use preferred image editing software (PS, PaintShopPro, Irfanview) to resize and reformat images appropriately for slideshow. Normally this is 1280x1024px @ 72dpi and jpeg format.
    
3. Create a new folder on your computer and give the folder a suitable project name eg demo
    
4. Copy the required images in jpeg format into the project folder
    
5. Open Pictures2Exe (P2E) software and select “File>New” on the menu bar. This will create a new slideshow project. You will be asked to give it a name eg myslideshow.
    
6. Immediately save the new project file by selecting “File>Save As” on the menu bar. You should save the new project into the project folder you created in (3) above. The project file is given a .pte extension automatically by P2E so in this example the project file will be named “myslideshow.pte” and saved into the folder “demo”. To make things easier while creating the show it is important to save the project file into the same folder as the jpeg images.
    
7. The P2E screen is split into three panes. The left hand pane displays the folder structure on your PC and any jpeg images contained in the current selected folder. This pane is used to select images that you want to include in your slideshow and is referred to as the “File List”. You will need to navigate up and down the folder structure to select the project folder (demo) using the drive letter selector icons and up-folder icon which are located at the top of the pane. Unfortunately P2E is not very user friendly here and you will have to pay close attention to selecting the correct folder. Once you have selected the correct project folder you should see the jpeg images you copied in step (2) displayed in the left hand pane. Note that you have not yet added anything to the slideshow project as yet.
    
8. The right hand pane displays images that have been added to the project and should currently be blank as the project is empty at the moment. It is referred to as the “slide-list” pane. There are several ways to add images to the project however one of the easiest is to double click on an image in the file-list (left hand pane). It will be added to the project and will appear in the right hand pane (slide-list).
    
9. The centre pane displays the currently selected image at a larger size. Click on the image in the centre pane to display it at full screen. Click again to return to the P2E three pane view.
    
10. Add all the required images into the slide-list pane in the order that you want them to appear in the slideshow. You can drag and drop images in the slide-list to change the order that they appear. You can also remove an image from the project by selecting it in the slide-list pane and hitting the delete key. This removes the slide from the project but does not delete it from your PC. It will therefore still appear in the file-list pane and you can add it again if you change your mind.
     
11. At this stage you have created your slideshow. P2E will apply default slideshow (project) settings automatically. You can preview the slideshow by clicking the “Preview” button on the bottom menu bar.
     
12. The preview will display each image in the slide-list in sequence at full screen and apply default timings (the length of time in seconds each slide remains on-screen) and default transitions (the manner in which each image moves or transitions into the next image).
     
13. The slideshow will play continuously by default but you can end the show at any time by left clicking the mouse or pressing the mouse “Escape” (Esc) key on your keyboard.
     
14. You should save the project (File>Save) routinely as you work on your slideshow to update the project file (pte extension). If you wish to create an executable file that will play on any PC you must use the menu option “File>Create Slideshow As” and you will be asked to name the executable file eg demo.exe. Note that the project file demo.pte and the executable file demo.exe are entirely separate. In general you keep the project file (.pte) updated as you progress through the creation of your slideshow. At the end of each session you should also resave the executable file (.exe) to ensure that both pte and exe files are current.
     
There are many more functions within P2E that can be used to customise both the project options and the display and transition of individual slides in the project.
 

Some Useful References

Free download of P2E trial version (10 slide max) or full version

A free download of Al Robins (P2E guru) tutorial on how to use P2E. The best tutorial available but 13MB download so anyone on dial-up should wait for it to be added to club laptop or visit Maggie with a USB key.

Workshop 2

Preparation of Title Slide and Slide Captions.

As you know the club have purchased several of Barry Beckhams tutorial discs and he covers a wide range of topics from the basics of how to use P2Exe through to fairly advanced techniques. So I thought tonight I would try to show you something slightly different and demonstrate one technique – there are several others – that can be used to prepare an opening credits slide sequence. This is often used at the start and end of a slideshow.

First of all here is the opening sequence from my own Mono slideshow which most of you will have seen before. It is the creation of the opening sequence that I am going to try and demonstrate. I will show the beginning of the slideshow now so that you can see what I am aiming for.

The sequence comprises of four different slides.
The Black Screen
The Image - in this case the Oil Drum
The slide of the image plus the title text – Mono Collection
The fourth slide is the image, the title text and the author text – Maggie Bruce.

The first slide is the black screen. Many people prefer to start their slide show from a black screen and not the desktop. It is not compulsory only one of personal preference but for the purposes of tonight’s demo we will start from the black screen.

The black screen slide is actually only a single black pixel which the software expands to fill the screen. The reason for using this approach is to reduce the file size of the slide show. If anyone wishes to use this technique in their own slide show I can give you a copy of the black dot slide.

In this sequence the black dot slide stays on the screen for four seconds. This is set up in the project options when setting up the show. The default setting when opening a project is four seconds but you can change this if you wish.

The next three slides ie. the image (oil drum), the oil drum plus Mono Collections text and the oil drum plus Mono Collections plus Maggie Bruce are all previously prepared in your image editing software eg Photoshop in the same way as the rest of the slides in the slide show.

I will not be covering that in this demo as it would take far too long and we do not have time. Perhaps you may remember we covered that briefly in the night last session when we demonstrated the new projector. The club has purchased a range of professional tutorials to help us all on our way and all these topics are covered in them. These are all available for the members to borrow and then they can work through them at their own pace.

To continue – once you have made your three slides to create the title sequence they are added to the project.

We add the first real slide of the sequence – here it is the image of the oil drum. When selecting the image for the background of the title sequence you have to ensure it easily lends itself to the addition of text. In this image there is plenty of space to add varying amounts of text. If you do not have a suitable image that links in with the rest of the slide show then it is probably better to use a plain background.

You will now appreciated that the complete slide changes in the slide show but because the background is the same in the three slides it looks as though the text is appearing on top of the slide.

The way the text appears is determined by the transition effect applied to the slide. You select the effect by clicking on the customize slide tab at the bottom.

In this sequence the third slide ie the image plus Mono Collections has a fade in effect applied for a time of 6 seconds.

So to see what will happen when this effect is applied to the third slide click on the preview button. Now we see the text Mono Collections fading in but remember it is the whole slide – text and image that is fading in.

So by now you will all realise what is happening when the fourth slide is added to the sequence and the Maggie Bruce appears to be written over the slide. It is actually the entire slide that is changing with a transition effect applied.

To create this illusion the fourth slide has a page effect added to it in the customize slide box. The timing of the effect is 15 seconds.

It goes without saying that when creating the slides in Photoshop in the first place the Mono Collections text has to be in the same position in slides three and four so the effect looks as though it is only being applied to the Maggie Bruce and everything else on the slide is not moving.

The timings selected for the amount of time the slide stays on the screen with nothing happening and the timing for the duration of the effect are all part of the crafting of the slide show and should fit in with the music. Again I will not go into that just now. You can create your opening sequence without worrying too much about it synchronising with the music for now.

So that is how to create the opening sequence for a slide show. Likewise the same procedure can be followed for creating the credits at the end.

I will now briefly mention an alternative method to add the text for a caption on an individual slide using the P2exe software.

I will demonstrate this by showing how I added the caption to the first image in the Mono Collection Show.

In this slideshow each image has three slides added to create the caption however as the text is created in the P2exe software only one image had to be made in Photoshop.

The first image in the Mono Collection is the Falls of Falloch. Slide 5 in the show is the image only which stays on the screen for 10 seconds.

Slide 6 is made by duplicating slide 5 and the caption is added by clicking on the Object Editor tab. Here we create a text box and type in the caption choosing the desired font, colour and font size then position the text in this case at the bottom of the slide.

Next the transition effect from slide 5 to slide 6 is created again by clicking on the customise slide tab selecting fade in and a time of 3 seconds. The slide will remain on the screen for 10 seconds by setting that on the main tab.

By clicking on the preview button you can check the transition. Again it appears as if it is just the text that is fading in but the reality is it is the entire slide that is changing.

Slide 7 is a duplicate of slide 5 ie there is no text on slide 7. The same fade transition effect is applied so that this time the caption appears to fade out.

This method of adding text appears easier to achieve than adding text in Photoshop however it has some limitations because each persons PC might have different fonts loaded.

In particular if you use an unusual font when adding text in P2Exe you should be aware that it may not be loaded on everyone elses PC. In that situation the PC will substitute one of the standard fonts and that may interfere with the effect.