Wondershare Photo Gallery

It may take a couple of minutes for all 27 photos to load into the cylinder.
To view a photo, click on it to zoom in. Then click on the photo again to zoom back out again. Hold down the mouse and drag to rotate the cylinder around. We can also use the top right hand corner player buttons to advance through the pictures.

The above super cool 3D photo gallery was made using a $50 US application called "Wondershare Flash Gallery Factory Deluxe".

A full overview of this product can be found at:
http://www.flash-gallery-software.com/flash-gallery.html#10113

The cylindical slideshow maker can be found at this web page:

http://www.ourpix.com/tutorial/3d-flash-photo-gallery.html#10113

It does a slideshow of our photos, and we can add background music as well.

Note that on our PWofICT Blog page we are limited to a 550 pixels wide display of the cylinder. However because it runs as a Flash.SWF file, it is fully scalable, and looks even better as a larger sized cylinder on a single web page.

Eg. Click on the following link to view a larger version of the cylinder gallery:

http://www.passyworld.com/passyHTMLs/WondershareGalleryCyl.html

Everyone should try this Wondershare software to see how easy it is to use.
The first step is to download and install the trial software from the above web page. When we start the application, we click "order later" and this will give us access to use the software for 30 days free of charge.

(However, as shown in the example at the end of this blog post, your photos will have the "Evaluation Copy" message placed on top of them).

There is a full set of instructions on how to use the software, at the following web page. The software is very quick and easy to use.

http://www.ourpix.com/tutorial/3d-flash-photo-gallery.html#10113

Basically it is a simple three step process:

• Browse to find your photos on your hard drive, and double click on each one to add it to the gallery maker.

• Choose a template (such as the 27 pics cylinder one)

• Publish an output SWF or HTML or EXE etc file.

Note that our published .SWF file of 27 photos ended up around 3 MB in size.

When we installed the software, we obtained some sample pictures in a folder at: C:\Program Files\Wondershare\Flash Gallery Factory\res\Samples

In this folder, the photos are all .jpgs that are 800x600 in size.

We therefore took our own selection of photos, and made them all 800x600 .JPG files using Adobe CS3 Photoshop. While we were in Photoshop, we also played around with filters and effects on a number of our pictures. This created some very nice "arty" results.

Wondershare Gallery has several types of different gallery layouts such as spheres, cubes, circles, and many others. This one below is called a "Wall" layout. (Because we did not have a set of 36 photos for the wall, some of our 27 photos are repeated on the wall.

There are two versions of Flash Gallery Factory: Standard and Deluxe.
Here at Passy World we are using the Deluxe version.
To see the differences go to this page:
http://www.flash-gallery-software.com/comparison.html

If you like what you have seen here, then you will definitely want to purchase your own copy of "Wondershare Flash Gallery Factory Deluxe" by clicking the following link:
http://www.flash-gallery-software.com/purchase-flash-gallery.html


Here at Passy World we plan to use the WS Gallery software to create interesting visual displays of items for you throughout our blog posts in 2010.

Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi

Photoshop Extreme Makeovers

Picture Source: http://www.tutorialized.com

The above is a typical "Before" and "After" image of a Photoshop Makeover.

Like it or not, most of the images we see of people and food products in our supermarkets have usually been photoshopped in some way to make them seem supposedly more appealing.

Still, from a technical point of view, it is really amazing the progress that has been made in all forms of digital art in the last few years, especially digital photography.

YouTube Photoshop Makeover Examples

Here are several YouTube videos showing some fairly typical Photoshop Makeovers:

2 minute Makeover


1 minute 30 secs amazing makeover:


1 minute 30 secs "Beauty is Fake" makeover:


2 minutes 30 seconds several makeovers in one video:


3 minutes 30 seconds Photoshop makeover:





YouTube Makeover Tutorials

Here is a very basic 8 minute tutorial to get started on some typical makeover methods:




Photoshop Mama on YouTUbe has some good makeover tutorial videos.

Here is a typical Photoshop Mama Tutorial Video: (10 minutes long)



Here is another 10 minute makeover tutorial from a different presenter:




Step by Step Free Makeover Tutorials

The following website has some great quick to do basic step by step Photoshop makeovers: http://ilike2photoshop.blogspot.com/ such as these:

http://ilike2photoshop.blogspot.com/2008/08/change-hair-shadetone.html

http://ilike2photoshop.blogspot.com/2009/06/eye-shadow-in-photoshop.html

http://ilike2photoshop.blogspot.com/2009/01/sun-tan-in-photoshop.html


Tutorialized.com (http://www.tutorialized.com) also has some excellent free Photoshop retouching exercises like this one: "Photoshop Professional Make-up and Face Slimming Tutorial" : http://www.tutorialized.com/view/tutorial/Professional-Make-up-and-Face-Slimming/52849

This is the actual tutorial that the before and after photo at the start of this post came from.

Lynda.com also has some great photoshop retouching exercises, but these are not free. Best to join up on the monthly $25 fee and be able to use Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, and virtually anything else your designing heart could desire at: http://www.lynda.com .


Anyway, time for me to go and give my teeth a bit of a makeover, the good old fashioned way, with brush, paste, and elbow grease.

Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi

Adding a Slideshow to Blog Sidebar

You may have noticed that this Blog has a Slideshow of surfing pictures down the right hand side of the page. This is similar to the screen shot shown above.

It is quite easy to add a slideshow to a Google Blog, especially if we are happy for Google to pick the photos at random for us. (Rather than us uploading them all ourself to Google Picasa and then building our own unique slide show).

The following PDF document gives detailed step by step instructions on how to set up a slide show on our blog sidebar.

If you would like to have your own copy of this PDF, then simply click the save disk icon button on the PDF viewer, and you should be able to save it to your own hard disk.

Alternatively, you can view or save the PDF by clicking the link below:

Click here to open or save the above PDF

Hope you like the Surfing pictures,

Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi

Using Google PICASA for Photos

The Slideshow below was made by using Google Picasa:


The example slide show contains composite images made by students using Adobe Fireworks. Students are set the task to make "people" using plants, fruits, and vegetables. This teaches them how to use the selection, resize, and copy tools in Adobe CS3. They also have a lot of fun creating their family of "Plant People".

Google “Picasa” is a Web 2.0 photo display and online storage application, much like its main rival Yahoo’s “Flickr”.

In Picasa, we can upload up to 1 gigabyte of Photos for free, and assemble them into “Web Albums” and then create slideshows of these albums.

We can then email our Photo Album to friends, or get the web link for our album to put it into a word document. We can also generate embed HTML to put a slideshow of our album onto a webpage, like we have done at the start of this blog post.

Google Picasa is located at: http://picasaweb.google.com

The following PDF document gives detailed information about how to get started using Google Picasa:

If you would like to have your own full size copy of this PDF, then simply click the save disk icon button on the PDF viewer, and you should be able to save it to your own hard disk.

Alternatively, you can view or save the PDF by clicking the link below:

Click here to open or save the "How to Use Picasa" PDF


Although I have been using Yahoo's Flickr for my photos, (see previous post on this), I have recently started using Google Picasa as well.

Picasa is easier than Flickr, (less steps), for quickly getting a slideshow up onto a web page; however we don't get all of Flickr's fancy bottom-of-screen scrolling and viewing options.

Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi

ANIMOTO Your Photos to Video

Turn on your sound speakers, press the Play button on the above movie, wait for the loading counter to reach 100, and then briefly enjoy a snappy little thirty second movie.

The above Animoto music clip was made using some “Sponge-Bob and Patrick Adventures” pictures that my students made using Layers in Adobe CS3 Fireworks.

Animoto is a web application that requires basic IT skills to create a professional looking “music video” using photos supplied by the user. It has its own music soundtracks that can be used, so we do not have to worry about uploading songs ourselves. (Although we can do this if we want to).

Animoto then “automagically” processes our photos, syncs them with the music, and creates a short vibrant music video for us, that is a bit like a 30 second advertisement or movie trailer.

In Animoto it takes 12 to 15 pictures to make a 30 second video, and it seems that the free video limit is in fact 30 seconds. Otherwise credits have to be paid, (which means spending dollars to purchase these credits).
We think it costs about $30 US to buy credits, but we do not know how many total minutes or animations this might get for us.

The following Slide Share presentation by Tony Cassidy gives a very good overview of How to Use Animoto, for entertainment and educational purposes.

Using ANIMOTO

View more documents from GeoBlogs.

The PDF document below, gives full step-by-step instructions and details about signing up and using Animoto for the first time.

If you would like to have your own copy of this PDF, then simply click the save disk icon button on the PDF viewer, and you should be able to save it to your own hard disk.
Alternatively, you can view or save the PDF by clicking the link below:
(Click the Browser's Back Button to return to this Blog).

Click here to open or save the PDF

Here is an Animoto from Jaqui Sharp's excellent Education Blog at: http://jacquisharp.blogspot.com/.

This Animoto shows that we can take a few PowerPoint slides saved as JPG's, add some Clip Art of Bees, and end up with a very nice litttle Animoto to view prior to the PPT presentation.

Animoto is also excellent for making Online Greeting Cards. We could for example get around 10 or 12 photos of a person's friends, or of Christmas scenes, upload appropriate music, and thereby create an electronic card that we could then email to a group of people. (Use the "Share" option in Animoto to send the email link).

For me, the 30 second free limit on Animoto left me wanting more. A one to two minute video would be a lot better, as it would give time to tell a proper story with plenty of Text frames and Spotlight frames. But for a longer video, we have to start paying dollars, and so that’s where the Buck stops for me !

Still, thirty seconds of free fun was ok, and it will be interesting to see what my students come up with using Animoto next term.

Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi