Resizing Photos for PE4 Slideshow

[EleanorAliza]

Hi Everyone, This is a multiple question:

1. I bought Steve Grisetti's book The Guide to Adobe Premiere Elements 7 based on his suggestion that PE4 was very similar. On page 60 he notes an article under Steve's Tips "Creating Slideshows with Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements", but I can't find a section called this. Is it still available?

2. I am trying to made a slideshow DVD playable on TV out of 300 pictures. I followed Steve's advise (page 38) and batch resized each folder to 1000 x 750 pixels from original 4000x3000. All my landscape photos now say 1000 x 750, but the portrait are 1000 x 1333. Is this OK, or should I have batched landscape & portrait photos separately within each folder??

3. On page 38, it also suggests unchecking "Default Scale to Frame Size", I did that before importing the folders. But when I dragged a photo onto the frame, it only showed a small portion of the photo. Could not review it at all. I then deleted the project, rechecked "Default Scale to Frame Size" imported the photos again, and now could see the entire photo. What am I doing wrong here??

4. I dragged all the photos individually from my first folder onto the frames in the order I wanted, added some transitions to see how it was looking. If I view in monitor panel, photos seem OK, if I go to full screen mode they are pixelated, jumpy sort of. I even tried "Rendering" it still looked the same in full mode.

Could this be the problem: I have a C and a D drive. I have dedicated the 250gb D drive to video and slideshows only. I have done videos where I captured directly onto D drive and never had a problem. When I imported the photo folders into my Slideshow project (which is stored on the D drive), the folders are imported from the C drive. Is the pixelated Full Screen view because of this? Should I copy the resized photos to the D drive and start again?

I thought before I redo the entire thing, someone might have the ansewr.

Thanks So much. Aliza

[Steve Grisetti]

Hi, Aliza. Thank you for supporting the book -- and welcome to Muvpix.com! We love to have new friends join our little community.

1. The Steve's Tips article is still out there (although it's in the old "ebook" form and not a PDF). Here's a link to it that I found by typing "Creating Slideshows" in our product search box.
http://muvipix.com/products.php?searchp ... =0&btn.y=0

2. Don't worry about the portrait photos being sized to 1000x1333. Ideally you'd resize them in a separate process so that they'd be 750x1000 -- but don't worry about it. 1000x1333 is probably not so big that it's going to cause problems.

3. The reason you're only seeing a portion of each photo when you bring it into Premiere Elements is because the 1000x750 photos are larger than the 720x480 frame. About a third larger. This is good, because it gives you room for creating panning and zooming motion paths around the photos if you'd like. If you're not planning to pan and zoom, you can easily resize the photos by right-clicking on one of them and selecting Show Properties to open the Properties panel. Then, in the Motion properties, setting the Scale to about 65% -- it should now fit perfectly in the frame. (While you're in there, also slide the Flicker Removal slider all the way to 100%.) Then right-click on that photo on your timeline, select Copy, then select all the other photos on the timeline, right-click and select Paste Attributes. This will automatically size all of the photos to 65% scale. You'll likely have to tweak the scale and position of the portrait photos a bit manually, but your landscape photos should all snap right into place!

4. Render your timeline so that the red line above the clips turns green and it should look pretty good. I recommend against playing it full-screen on your computer though. (In fact, Adobe removed this feature in later versions of the program.) Your computer is many times the resolution of video, and all video looks pixelated at full screen. Just trust what you're seeing in the Monitor panel. It will look great when you output it!

In short, Aliza, you're doing pretty much everything right! (And why not? You have a great book telling how to do it!) No need to redo a thing.

Once you've resized your photos and rendered, output a video and watch it on your TV. You should be very pleased with the results!

[EleanorAliza]

Hi Steve,
I am honored that the author of my favorite book has responded to my question, and so quickly! Very, Very Impressed!!!!

I have decided to start from scratch and get this thing right:
I will resize all my portraits from the original copy to 750x1000.
I will go back and uncheck the "Default Scale to Frame Size" and follow your directions. I am going to copy them and insert in your book so I never make THAT mistake again. LOL
I am so happy about your explanation of the lousy playback at full screen. I thought I might have a major video card problem or something.

You didn't comment on my C/D drive statement. Since I am starting from scratch, would it be better to keep the resized copies in the folder I named for this slideshow (along with all the other stuff Adobe adds to it when you start a new project) so that when previewing, the photos are on the same "D" drive as my .prel files etc.. Also, would this make it easier to burn the project to a folder. I never burn to disc, I always do a folder first and then burn from there. As I said, my "D" drive has no OS and no programs on it at all. Just dedicated to ADOBE videos & slideshows. When I am all done, I then copy the entire folder to an external 1TB harddrive. Then I delete old projects to keep "D" drive nice and clean and practically empty. I also defrag before starting a new project, then again before burning to a folder. Do you think this is overkill??? I am a true believer in backup copies because of losing a harddrive and all my work a long time ago.

I hope I am not abusing my privilege as a member by asking so many dumb questions. I am a 60 year old Grandma who has been self teaching herself ADOBE over the last 2 years. But this is my first attempt at a slideshow.
Thank you ever so much for all your help so far. You have truly made my day.
Aliza

[momoffduty]

Hi Aliza! When I resize my photos for a project, I don't bother separating the portrait ones. As for the folders, it depends on how you want your workflow. For a personal project, I keep the original in the file by date & year in a folder "Digital Photos" on my D drive. When I batch resize them, I place those copies in a folder in the PrEl Project. These copies are for the slideshow project only and I do not have them in the organizer. That way when I delete the project later those copies aren't tied the PSE organizer.

Another feature in PSE is to tag your photos for a project in Albums or Collections (not sure on the terminology.) In that view you can rearrange the photos in a new order. Usually, I break the project up into 4 or more subgroups depending on the size of the project. Yours is 300? Then you could group those in 6 or 8 or more.

After you arrange the photos in order, you can export as new files which the names of the files can be in order and to the folder in your PrEl Project. Say you were doing a vacation project, the first folder of photos can be VAC1_01 as the starting number. The next folder can be VAC2_what ever # is after the last in folder 1, etc.

You would still have to batch resize the folders and check to write over these files since they are copies. The plus side to the above is that the photos are in order and grouped into folders. You can then import each folder and drag the folder to the timeline. Saves time and keeps the PrEl project panel organized.

Read this post from Barb about collections & exporting, she explains it much better than I can:
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4148&p=35959&hilit=photoshop+elements+collection+export#p35959

[Steve Grisetti]

Ask all the questions you want, Aliza! That's why we started this little community!

As for where your photos are stored, it really makes no difference, as long as you've got the disc space. If you've got an additional drive (other than your C drive), it's probably best to keep your photos and video files there. That leaves your C drive free for filling up with programs and such. It sounds like that's what you're doing -- using your C drive for programs and your D drive for media and project files -- which is great!

I do recommend that, whenever you start a new Premiere Elements, you create a new folder for it. That way all of the scratch disk and render files the program creates as it works will stay in one place. And if and when the time comes you want to remove the project to make space, you can get rid of the whole kit and caboodle simply by deleting that folder.

[EleanorAliza]

Thanks Again for both posts.

I will apply all the suggestions and get back to the forum when I finish the slideshow DVD and let you know how it looks on a big screen TV.

Thanks so much everyone, all suggestions are welcome!
Alizaq