Creating Slideshows

[Cheeky in TN]

What do you guys use for creating slide shows? I have Photoshop Elements 5 and Premiere Eleements 3 and have been trying to create a Disney slide show from my trips. My first cut was a little over one hour and had 680 pics. Elements kept giving warning about anything over 500 pics or 60 minutes could cause a problem. I figure I have an upgraded computer, go for it. It has crashed everytime. I have now trimmed it to just under 500 pics and 45 minutes and it still acts buggy.

The weird thing is I created a slideshow on an old computer in Picasso that had 1300 pics, but I do not like the Picasso organizes everything. Am I missing something in Photoshop?

 

[manning]

What do you guys use for creating slide shows? I have Photoshop Elements 5 and Premiere Eleements 3 and have been trying to create a Disney slide show from my trips. My first cut was a little over one hour and had 680 pics. Elements kept giving warning about anything over 500 pics or 60 minutes could cause a problem. I figure I have an upgraded computer, go for it. It has crashed everytime. I have now trimmed it to just under 500 pics and 45 minutes and it still acts buggy.

The weird thing is I created a slideshow on an old computer in Picasso that had 1300 pics, but I do not like the Picasso organizes everything. Am I missing something in Photoshop?

I have found it is best to keep slide shows under 10 minutes or less and change the slides every 3-5 seconds. (vary it).

In the old days my dad use to show slide shows (monday night at the slideshow.) Two things happened. We ran for the hills or fell asleep.

 

[boBQuincy]

I created a 30 minute slideshow with about 1000 images. It is broken up into about 10 chapters: for easier editing; for faster searching; and to keep the program working quicker.

I used ProShow Gold and found it can choke on very large shows but by segmenting them into chapters it works ok. If you really want to keep a large show in one piece you might try a video program, and set up each image as xx frames with transitions.

 

[allyn]

i second the recommendation for proshow gold.

 

[jann1033]

i didn't count the photos but i made 2 slide shows with pse5 that ran close to an hr each. i have an old computer and more problems with pse5 than anyone else in the universe but the slideshow maker works perfectly for me
i do kind of agree about the length though...if you plan on showing it to anyone who wasn't on vacation with you, i think 15mins would probably be the limits of their endurance. it's nice to leave them wanting more. could you split it up by parks or something?

 

[Cheeky in TN]

the video is actually for my family, mainly my son. He has been bugging me to put one together of all our Disney trips (not that i mind at all ). i did the slideshow with 1000+ pics from our last trip (it had a done of pics since i had just got my Rebel XTi). Maybe it is just my pc, but it is a 2.4ghz pentium, 1.5 gig memory and 35 gb free disk space. I can not see how that would be the issue. I have been trying Roxio media creator and it has been more stable, but still locked one or twice.

My plan is now like mentioned above. I have 5 trips, so I will make each it's own slide show then use a video creator to put them together. i usually lay Disney music below the slideshow then my son watched them like movies and makes plans for the next trip.

 

[jann1033]

you have more ram than i do( i only have 512) so that could help but according to adobe( one of the numerous times i emailed them complaining about my computer freezing with pse5,) i needed more open space and i had 40gb at the time( they never asked about ram)...i thought that seemed crazy but that's what they said. have you downloaded the patch ( 5.02)? maybe try that. mine worked fine for a few weeks after i did that and once again un and re installed but it seems to me the problems are something to do with having a lot of photos open or in the bin at once which you do with the slideshow. like i said the slide show worked fine for me but if i had over 10 photos in the editor bin , after i saved a few, it would freeze up and not let me save any more..i checked the organizer and the ones i had saved before were saved so i don't know what happens but i think it has something to do with multiple photos open this time ( after the patch) it was when it told me to backup and then wouldn't, had to once again re and uninstall so this time i put my scratch disks as my external drive( except for the first one) to see if that would help. if i continue to have problems i guess i'll eat the $70 and buy something else since i am out of patience.

 

[LaurieG]

I have also been using Roxio 8. I have purchased Version 9 but have not installed it yet.

 

[Cheeky in TN]

That is what i am using now, Roxio 9. I broke the show into 5 parts, one for each trip. I have been trying to limit it to 100 pics per segment, which is roughly 10-15 minutes per trip. The weird part is I am now to my last trip, and it was actually 175 pics and I figured i would go ahead. It has locked up my pc numerous times. So i planned to break trip 5 into two sections, but section 1 with 100 pics is still locking up. I am wondering how much the pics files size is hurting this since trip 5 was my first with the rebel xti and each pic is anywhere from 3.5 to 5 mb each.

It is just aggravating to me since I think I have enough pc power and the software should be capable, but I have had to shut down due to lock up at least 2 dozen times over the course of this project. If I stay with the pc and move the mouse every so often, it seems to make it. My computer has always been funny about when it goes into hibernation, not coming out of it. I just turned hibernate off to see if that helped , no dice.

 

[Aisling]

Can I create slideshows with Photoshop Elements? I got it for Christmas, and I'm still trying to figureout how to use the thing. I'm thinking of hiring a genius kid to spend a couple of hours with me to teach me.

I also want to learn how to do the selective coloring. I just don't have the techie know-how, I guess. Photoshop is really difficult.


Anyone in the Brooklyn NYC area willing to come over for a nice lunch and show me how to use my Photoshop? I'm not kidding!

 

[Cheeky in TN]

I have found Photoshop elements easy to use, regaulr photoshop is more difficult. I have tried making my slideshow in elements numerous times and i guess it was just too large. i have even broke the show into segments using Roxio, converted them to either MPG or WMV. i then tried using Premiere elements to put the individual movies together and it still crashes. I really do not want to restore my pc to it's original config, but I feel something must be using up resources and I do not know what it is.

OH WELL.. I think I may even go to the MAc store to look at a new IMAC this weekend to see how it does. Everyone I talk to that has switched raves about the Macs capabilities with media.

 

[DueyDooDah]

Would I be correct in assuming your images are in JPG format? In any case, how large are the images (average size of a single file)? I ask because 500 images at say 400KB would create a huge file. Adobe, in their infinate wisdom, has not posted the limitations of Elements. It could be that the size of the resulting file is more than Elements can handle. The process that Elements is using to create the resulting file is also a mystery. I have to assume that Elements uses it's scratch file extensively, and it probably creates one or more duplicates of working files as it attempts to organize, blend and otherwise create the desired result. This can lead to issues, especially if the working files exceed the size of the scratch area. I don't think you can manipulate the size of this area except by increasing the size of the free space available.

You can try increasing the size of the Memory & Image Cache used by Elements (you have to access this setting in the Standard Editor application.) I don't know if it will help, but it can't hurt.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I'm in the process of making a 3 minute slide show of a recent ski trip using Microsoft Elements. The show itself came out nice but I have two problems:

1) adding sound - it won't let me import any sound which is copyrighted. What other music is there? And

2) I'm trying to change the face in one picture of a girl who's crying (using Photoshop) but the face from the other picture is too big and I can't make it smaller.

This is one of many attempts I've had to make a slideshow and it's never been easy.

Any help would be appreciated.