"Fixed" photo looks worse in custom slide show, but fine in simple slide show

SB
Posted By
stan_bury
Apr 26, 2005
Views
262
Replies
9
Status
Closed
I am a new user.

I fixed an overexposed photo in photoshop and it looks much better than the original.

When I view the fixed photo in the browser, it looks great. When I add the photo into a custom slide show, the photo looks jaggedy. When I add the phot into a simple slide show, it looks fine.

Any ideas why the photo looks worse in a custom slide show?

Thanks,
Stan
Related Tags
custom fix look show simple slideshow

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O
o3v3tz
Apr 26, 2005
Stan,

When I add the photo into a custom slide show, the photo looks jaggedy

It is not clear to me at what point in the process of the Custom Slideshow you are examining the photo. And is it only this one photo or is it all photos and this one is just worse?

There are some Adobe techdocs that might (definite emphasis on might) be relevant if the problem is across all photos.

For the preview

<http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/331149.html>

If you have burned the Custom Slideshow to a VCD

<http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/330847.html>

Suggestion:

To see the Custom Slideshow in its best quality (short of doing custom definitions), I suggest that you write its WMV file to your hard drive using the quality level of 800×600 Proof and then play it back. Windows Media Player 10 is one choice to play it back.

Comments

Any ideas why the photo looks worse in a custom slide show?

Your photo probably has a resolution higher than 800×600 so it must be adjusted down for the custom slideshow. Both the fact that it must be adjusted down and the fact that the WMV file is a heavily compressed format are factors in why a photo will look different in the Custom Slideshow.

Personally, I had the experience that updating the driver for my Video Card to a more current level did improve the display of some of my photos within the Custom Slideshow. However, it is still true that these photos display with better resolution/quality in a Simple Slideshow or directly in PSE. My originals are generally 5 MP.

Barb Olson
T
tldri01
Apr 27, 2005
Use PixPlay if you wish to create a slideshow that works on computers. It uses the raw images for that and so does nothing to compress them. I don’t understand why that is not an option for Elements slideshows. I am soooooo disapointed. Not everyone wnats their slideshow on a TV.
SB
stan_bury
Apr 27, 2005
All,

Thanks for the tips.

The image quality in the slide show is noticably worse for "fixed" photos only, and not the untouched photos.

This is true at every step of the process. I have now completed my slide show and converted to .wmv and incorporated it into a PremEl movie. It is obvious that the "fixed" photos look jagged.

The only clue that I have, is that when I view the "fixed" photos in browser, they look jagged for a second and then sharpen up nicely after a second or two(as the computer finishes loading them?). However, when I add them to slide show it seems as though they are being added before they have completely loaded (sharpened up). I don’t know if that makes any sense.

My overall goal is to create a slide show that can be incorporated into a PremElements moview that can be viewed on PC or TV/DVD player.
Since my videoclips are very short I am not concerned about file size, just want the best video quality.

I will try the PixPlay suggestion.

Stan
O
o3v3tz
Apr 27, 2005
Stan,

My overall goal is to create a slide show that can be incorporated into a PremElements movie that can be viewed on PC or TV/DVD player.

Since you want to include these photos in a Premiere Elements movie, I recommend that you send the photos to Premiere Elements instead of doing a Custom Slideshow in PS Elements 3. When you do the custom slideshow first in Elements 3 then use the WMV is Premiere Elements, the photos are going through too many types of format conversion.

Suggest that you read this FAQ in the Premiere Elements forum

Forums Operations, "What should I do to prepare still images for use in my Premiere Elements project?" #, 28 Jan 2005 4:15 pm </cgi-bin/webx?50>

then read the part about sending the photos themselves to Premiere Elements in the following techdoc

<http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/330734.html>

This techdoc will give you some of the limitations of sending to Premiere Elements and it does not directly say the quality will be better. However, there have been other posts by knowledgeable people explaining that the intermediate conversion to WMV format will decrease the qualtiy of the end result.

I realize that the above suggestion does not address specifically fixed versus not fixed photos. However, since you say that other methods of displaying the fixed photos are ok, you may avoid the problem by not using the custom slideshow and going directly to Premiere Elements.

Suggest that you try taking a couple of fixed photos and a couple of untouched photos directly to Premiere Elements to compare quality of the result.

Barb Olson
SB
stan_bury
Apr 28, 2005
Barb,

Based on your suggestion, I tried sending photos from photoshop to premier. That was certainly alot easier than creating a slide show.

What is very odd is that nearly all of my photos now look jaggedey. What is really wierd is that if I pause the monitor in premiere, the photos all sharpen up to their original quality, when I play the photos in the monitor they looked all jaggedy. I still wonder if this is a memory/processor speed/video speed problem/limitation on my laptop.

I read the tech notes you suggested and I will try to re-size pictures before sending to premiere.

Perhaps I’ve just been spoiled by how good my digital photos (4 or 5megPixels) look. And that when they get scaled down they look so bad. I don’t understand why the photos need to have the resolution decreased. From the info you posted, I guess this is done to match tv quality. Seems sad to me to loose the quality. Maybe I should forget about TV/DVD for photos and just used PDF.

Frank
O
o3v3tz
Apr 28, 2005
Your most recent questions seem to be really more Premiere Elements questions than Photoshop elements questions and I don’t have the experience to answer them.

I can only say that since Premiere is geared to video editing which creates a DVD MPEG2 format, its output resolution is based on the MPEG2 standard and that is why the resoltuion must be decreased. However, that still does not explain your jaggedy results.

So if I were you, I would resize a few photos before sending to Premeire as the techdoc suggested and as you said you planned to do.

I still wonder if this is a memory/processor speed/video speed problem/limitation on my laptop.

You might check for a newer video card driver as that did help me. But all my photos originally had a problem, not just the edited photos.

Barb O
O
o3v3tz
Apr 28, 2005
Perhaps I’ve just been spoiled by how good my digital photos (4 or 5megPixels) look. And that when they get scaled down they look so bad. I don’t understand why the photos need to have the resolution decreased. From the info you posted, I guess this is done to match tv quality. Seems sad to me to loose the quality. Maybe I should forget about TV/DVD for photos and just used PDF.

I have noticed that there are multiple people on the Premiere Elements forum who are happily using Prem Elem for video editing and using another program for slideshows. Other programs will provide more functionality than the Elements PDF based slideshow. So if both photo resolution and functions like music, more transitions etc are important to you, a specialized slideshow program might be worth considering. You can check out specific comments in the Premiere Elements forum.

Barb O
O
o3v3tz
Apr 29, 2005
Stan,

I was still wondering about the fact that you say it is specifically the edited files that had problems in the slide show.

Are you sure that these photo files are good after the edit. Why don’t you check the pixel dimensions with Windows Explorer after an edit where you did not crop the photo. Just looking for something that could be wrong after the edit but not be noticed until you did the slide show.

Barb
Y
yang572033
Apr 30, 2005
Check this
http://www.photo2vcd.com
Hope it helps

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