How should I make a presentation from my images? You have been asked to show some pictures of a department, incident or firefighter for an event and you want to know how to be able to show the images smoothly.
There are many options available to you today including generic Slide programs, Special photo display programs or traditional 35mm slides.
Slide presentation software
Many businesses use electronic slide shows for sales or training and there are business orientated packages available to create that material. Although these are best for text and charts, they can also show pictures. If this is a department sponsored event and they already have Microsoft PowerPoint available for your use, that program offers a quick method to put multiple pictures together and make a show. The downside with this is that if you do not already own the Microsoft office suite, there is some cost involved in getting that solution. There is a free equivalent from Sun which is the program Impress www.openoffice.org/product/impress.html, this is part of their Open Office suite of programs and is available for anyone to use for free. In addition to making PowerPoint compatible files, Impress can output presentations in Flash (.SWF) format which can then be opened in any web browser on any computer system.
Both PowerPoint and Impress will automatically scale images to the minimum size required, (usually 1024 x768, also the size of most large projectors BTW) which means that the resulting presentation is the same quality on all computers. If higher quality is the issue, there are other options which can maintain the original quality if required.
Photo presentation software
I use Irfanview, http://www.irfanview.com/ which is a free photo viewing and editing program to make slide shows, it has the ability to generate a stand alone executable along with a directory of files . It then uses the original picture files or you can re-size them to any size you want before making the presentation. This can be used to make one presentation for each screen size expected. I have done this to have a 1024×768 and a 1280×800 version of the same show. It could also be used to make wide screen or normal screen versions.
There are many more out there that I have not used before. I did a quick search on-line for “stand alone executable photo” and “slideshow software” and found a large number of companies that are advertising free photo/slide presentation packages as well.
Here are a few commercial links
“Real” 35mm Slides
35mm slide projectors are still in existence. how can I transfer my electronic images to slide film? While this is not inexpensive, some Photo labs can still create slides from your JPEG images. A quick search on-line found these two labs who still offer this service,(as of March 2010, their web sites were still active) check with your favorite lab to see if they can do it also.
One of the common questions I get is: “How do I make sure my precious photography is preserved even though my computers crash every so often?”
The answer to this question is; backup, backup, backup! One backup strategy is to keep your best work at an outside vendor. I keep my selected and edited images available on-line for sale with a vendor who can print them on demand when someone wants a copy. This saves me time since I do not need to go back and look for an image to print and it also allows many more printing options than I would otherwise be able to offer. Smug Mug is my vendor of choice for selling prints and photo gifts; and, in the event of a computer catastrophe, I can retrieve my best images from there.
In addition to storing your finished products on-line, you should have a Network Attached Storage device or a portable USB backup drive to store copies of your original photos, edited versions and any other documents in case you have a catastrophic computer failure. Along with this backup strategy; you should also keep the Real Estate mantra in mind. Location, Location, Location. You do not want to have all of your backups in the same location in the case of a natural or unnatural disaster that might separate you from your data; so you should physically move your some of your backup NAS or portable drives to a different location.
Another way for those of us who can not afford to have multiple homes in different areas to store our backups at; is to use an on-line backup storage facility. These on-line backups are stored at the providers facility(s) and; as long as you do not forget your password(s), you can set up another computer to be able access your files. Below are a few on-line storage providers I have found. I have used some of these services, although; no endorsement is expressed or implied by inclusion on this list. All of these vendors offer free accounts for personal use. Larger or Commercial accounts are also available and if you are wanting to keep your photos for business use you will probably want a larger storage account. Let me know if there are any others you find.
In summary:
- Send your salable images to a Vendor who can make your prints for you.
- Backup your originals and working copies off of your computer.
- Keep backups off site to protect against catastrophes.
I hope that this post gives you the information you need to make sure your photos are protected.
It is that time of the year again. Daylight Savings Time. Remember to change the clocks in your cameras as well as your alarm clock. On March 14th, 2010, Daylight Savings Time advances local time by one hour at 2:00 AM.
Daylight Saving Time, begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November in most of the United States, excluding Arizona, Hawaii and the territories of Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. The clock goes forward one hour at 2:00 AM on the second Sunday in March and back to normal time at 2:00 AM on the first Sunday in November. Prior to 2007, daylight time in the United States began on the first Sunday in April and ended on the last Sunday in October.
Have you looked at photo submission requirements on-line and noticed that some places want to have IPTC info included with your photo? Wonder what IPTC stands for and what is the Photo Metadata Standard specification? The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) publishes Photo Metadata Standards that are available for electronically tagging your image files with information about the image that can be very useful to you as a photographer.
These standard Metadata tags allow you to embed information into your photo: your name, Copyright and contact information as well as the caption (description) of the image and any keywords you want to apply to it. This is important so that if someone finds a copy of your image and wants to contact you about using it, they will have a method to do so. It is also the best way to make sure that your copyright information is kept with the image and, since most photographic print vendors can read this information automatically when you upload your picture, this simplifies the process of entering and editing the information available on those web sites.
Most photo editing and work-flow programs available support some parts of IPTC so you should check with your program documentation and make sure you know how to enter the information correctly and verify that it can make it though your process and convey your important data to the final product. Once you master the IPTC process, you may only need to edit your photo information once and not spend time retyping it each time you want to use your photos.
Here are some examples:
IPTC edit sample
IrfanView is a freeware program that runs on Windows platforms (also on Linux under WINE) for looking at photo image files and has a plug-in that handles IPTC entry and editing. It offers a simple interface, just fill in the fields with the information you want to store and save your changes. This program uses the original IPTC standard and its data should be readable by programs using either the original standard or the newer version that is slowly being adopted for metadata transfer.
Lightroom® is a commercial product by Adobe® 
that allows photographers to process their photographs and it also allows you to enter and edit the IPTC metadata fields. As with many things in Lightroom, there is more than one way to enter your IPTC data. The best I have found so far is to use the template editor, pictured on the right. Note that with most programs only supporting the older IPTC standard, fill in both the copyright text field and the copyrighted flag so you have Copyright information regardless of what program reads your information. As always, you should verify that your necessary information is readable by your vendor because having the wrong information does not help you.
Updated March 2, 2010
If you have further examples, please feel free to send updates to me.
Have you ever deleted pictures from your camera and then thought, oops, I should not have done that? Have you formatted your memory card only to remember that you did not save the pictures on your computer? Have you ever had a memory card stop working and no longer be recognized by your computer?
You are not alone.
If you have not had to recover images from a memory card yet, you have been lucky. Eventually you are going to come across the need to get images off your memory cards and when you do, it is better to have the tools installed beforehand than to try to find them in an emergency.
There are many tools available that are either free or have trial versions that you can try for free so there is no reason not to look around and find one that you like before you need it.
Most of the programs are able to find image files that have been deleted due to the way that the file systems do deletions. Usually, any deleted files are not really deleted; however, the name is simply removed from the directory listing and the space used by that file is made available to be reused for other files later. This means that if you accidentally erase or format your memory card, you should immediately remove it from your camera and set it aside for processing later.
If you have the issue of a memory card that does not work in your camera and can not be read by your computer, do not despair, yet. Many of these programs also can address a USB card reader and directly read the contents of a memory card even if the computer you are using is not able to read the file system at all.
The bottom line is you should find and test a data recovery program before it becomes a critical need for you.
Here is a quick run down of some of the many tools that are available to recover files from memory cards. Most have Windows
versions and one has a Mac
version as well. You can also do a web search for more as this is just a quick overview to get you started on saving your images.
http://download.cnet.com/DataRecovery/3000-2094_4-10702323.html?tag=mncol;lst
http://www.digitalphotopicturerecovery.com/
http://www.cardrecovery.com/
http://www.softperfect.com/products/filerecovery/
http://www.compuapps.com/Products/datarecall/DataRecall.htm
http://download.cnet.com/VaioSoft-Recovery-Manager/3000-2094_4-10286449.html
CFPA membership dues are, well, um, due on Feb 1 for the calendar year 2010. We are using a new process to generate the bills this year and we are not sure if all of the information got correctly transferred into the system. If you are a member and have not yet seen your bill in e-mail or from the old fashioned post office, send us a note to dues2010@cfpafirephoto.org with your contact information and we will get it sorted out.
While we are on the topic of CFPA membership, if you are not currently a member and would like to join us, take a look at our application process http://www.cfpafirephoto.org/members/app.htm and fill one out.
The CFPA web site has been updated for the New Year.
Check out our new breadcrumb navigation hints in the footer of the pages, these should help keep you orientated while browsing through the site.
There have been a few pages that were moved and or renamed to make the navigation cleaner. These pages have 301 redirects entered from the old pages so there should not be any missed pages. Let us know if you find any broken links and we will work to get those fixed as soon as we can.
Check out our scanner frequencies pages to see some new pages and new features. We have integrated twitter feeds and CAD feeds where possible, if you know of more live information that is available, let us know and we will see about getting it integrated on those pages.
There is also a new blog that has been created and we will see how everyone likes this feature.
or Twitter
feeds of public interest information, these pages contain more than just frequencies for listening. There are also a few more departments with information pages which brings us to our next topic: Editors for the Department pages. We are looking for people to add and edit the Fire Department Information pages for various Fire Departments. These pages are used to help people get familiar with the local Departments and if we can get more coverage it will be helpful to more people. We currently have some of the larger Departments covered near Los Angeles; however, there are many more smaller Departments that are not covered and we would like to get information for more parts of the state as well. If you have information on your local area, send us a note at freq_cord@cfpafirephoto.org and we will see about setting you up as an editor.
