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More About Slideshows
I’ve had to give a number of presentations recently in a variety of arenas and I want to share some of my observations. Most of the time I use my own projector - the original Canon Realis. That way I remove at least one of the variables that can create unexpected color and contrast issues.
While teaching for one of the more prestigious workshop organizations in the US a few weeks ago, I was one of a number of instructors who presented a slideshow for the local community as well as the students at the school. We all used the school’s projector. That projector had been calibrated the previous night for the screen and room conditions where orientation was held. The next day we previewed our presentation in a different room (and screen) but the projector had not been recalibrated. My show had a number of slides with saturated yellows that looked awful. They were very orangey. But the slides of lavender fields and other flowers with purple were perfect. The tech folks in charge of the production said they’d recalibrate the projector and make any adjustments that were necessary. I had to trust them. That night I was in front of the group and was delighted as the presentation began and the yellows looked good. But then came the slides with purple and I wanted to run. The purples had become completely oversaturated so that there was no detail and they looked unbelievably awful ... and so different from the test run. That slideshow was done in Keynote. All of us that presented (except the one that was black and white only) had some color issues that night. In all honesty I don't know exactly what the tech people did, but whatever it was, it wasn't a good thing.
A while ago someone had told me that they had switched to using FotoMagico for slide shows and that they had much better luck with color consistency. I decided to try it. The program itself is a bit pricey ($129 for the version that accesses your Aperture library.) However it’s very intuitive and easy to use. And as a bonus you have much better control over any music you add - including when it begins, when it fades out, etc. FotoMagico also has all sorts of transitions and panning and zooming effects you can add if you choose. Unfortunately you can’t create text slides other than title slides.
Last week I had a two part presentation to do. One was just a show of my images set to music and the other was a didactic program. I used Fotomagico to create the image slideshow, but since I wanted a border effect around the images, I exported the images from Aperture to a folder and then ran a Photoshop action on them rather than just accessing my Aperture library directly. I dragged the folder with the prepared images to FotoMagico and set all the images in place. One downside of Fotomagico is not having a light table view - it makes ordering the images a bit more challenging. Other than that it was simple to create the slideshow and add the music. I appreciated not being forced to have the music start with the title slide. But more than that, I really liked that the colors and contrast looked great during the actual presentation!
I deliberately used some of the same images in the didactic talk that I gave that night. I prepared that talk using Keynote since I needed text slides as well as image slides. The images were accessed directly from Aperture using the media inspector - but were the same images that I had exported and used in Fotomagico. While some of the images were fine, others were too contrasty and over saturated. I’m a photographer at heart, but I know that somehow there has to be a step that’s not quite where it needs to be in this process. It makes no sense that one version of the file that’s exported works fine and some files from the media browser into Keynote work beautifully while others have issues. They were all supposed to be sRGB files, or so I thought. (Check down in the comments for some further checking that I did.) I don’t know if the issue is with the media browser or with Keynote, but at least I know one way to prepare a slideshow and have it present the way I’m expecting it to. At some point I’ll use the media inspector with FotoMagico and see how the images project.
I’m interested to hear how some of you are creating your slideshows and your thoughts about the projected results (not how it looks on a computer). Oh, by the way, after I paid full price for FotoMagico they sent me three 10% off discount coupons to distribute to friends. The first three people who let me know they’d like a coupon (include your email address so I can email you directly) are welcome to them.
If you still have a coupon left for FotoMagico, please send to my address.
I am new to a Mac - last December - and I used to use ProShow Producer on my PC. Loved it. It did everything I wanted and I am picky.
They don't have a Mac version so I am searching for another program. Keynote is fine for some things but it is more like PowerPoint and doesn't have the smooth fades and other things like pans and zooms.
Hopefully Fotomagico will fill the void.
I have been doing audio visual presentations for 50 to 60 years as an amateur and still do them for audiences who seem to enjoy them.
If you still have a coupon left for FotoMagico, please send to my address.
I am new to a Mac - last December - and I used to use ProShow Producer on my PC. Loved it. It did everything I wanted and I am picky.
They don't have a Mac version so I am searching for another program. Keynote is fine for some things but it is more like PowerPoint and doesn't have the smooth fades and other things like pans and zooms.
You say that all of the images you export in various ways _should_ all be sRGB. Do you know that to be a fact? My previews generate as Adobe RGB, whereas my export preferences are set to sRGB. I'd be interested to hear if you really get different results in Fotomagico and Keynote when you use the media browser (i.e., previews) in both. That would imply something pretty wacky going on with one or the other programs...
Personally, I think the whole color space problem is a mess. There is no reason it needs to be as hard as it is. It is astounding to me that we are willing to put up with it merely because we are told "this way you have more control"... [And before the various color purists attack me, yes I do actually understand the problem, I'm a computer scientist first and photographer second]
Hi, I would also love a coupon so long as it is valid in the UK. Otherwise, better let someone else make use of it.
Black, I couldn't agree with you more that the whole color space issue is a mess. I just did a bit more checking and discovered that if I export a file out of Keynote it uses my monitor profile (not sRGB or Adobe RGB). I tried to check out the profile that the Media Browser is using by selecting an image in iPhoto from my Aperture library, then putting it in an email, saving the file from the email and opening it in Photoshop. That indicated that the file was Adobe RGB 1998. I also checked from the browser that FotoMagico uses - this isn't necessarily the same as what the Media Browser in the Apple apps is doing - but in FotoMagico the files from the Aperture library are definitely in Adobe RGB. It seems to me that it would be far more useful for them to be in sRGB, but perhaps there are aspects that I'm not aware of. But undoubtedly the color issues that I've experienced are probably a result of using Adobe RGB 1998 rahter than sRGB, but also may be due to Keynote using the monitor profile. Now if it switches and uses the projector profile, I'd think that would make it more accurate.
Surely there has to be a way for this entire process to be more consistent and straight forward!
BTW, all three coupons are now gone.
Black, I couldn't agree with you more that the whole color space issue is a mess. I just did a bit more checking and discovered that if I export a file out of Keynote it uses my monitor profile (not sRGB or Adobe RGB). I tried to check out the profile that the Media Browser is using by selecting an image in iPhoto from my Aperture library, then putting it in an email, saving the file from the email and opening it in Photoshop. That indicated that the file was Adobe RGB 1998. I also checked from the browser that FotoMagico uses - this isn't necessarily the same as what the Media Browser in the Apple apps is doing - but in FotoMagico the files from the Aperture library are definitely in Adobe RGB. It seems to me that it would be far more useful for them to be in sRGB, but perhaps there are aspects that I'm not aware of. But undoubtedly the color issues that I've experienced are probably a result of using Adobe RGB 1998 rahter than sRGB, but also may be due to Keynote using the monitor profile. Now if it switches and uses the projector profile, I'd think that would make it more accurate.
Surely there has to be a way for this entire process to be more consistent and straight forward!
BTW, all three coupons are now gone.
Ellen, that is pretty much what I expected. I'm positive that the reason that the reason you were having different results was because of the use of Adobe RGB v. sRGB. We know that the media browser is just using the generated previews (and it seems likely that Fotomagico is doing the same). To be honest, I can think of no good reason for previews to not use sRGB if we consider how they are used (slideshows in Keynote, on websites from iWeb, iPhoto for, well, whatever people move photos to iPhoto for). sRGB is going to work better for all of these things. The average slide projector can't even display the entirety of the sRGB color space, so trying to display something in Adobe RGB is doomed to failure.
As I've said elsewhere in the comments to these blogs, I have a real love/hate relationship with previews. They are so handy in so many ways, the implementation is just not quite right. I really have a problem with the fact that I can't tell which images have them and which don't until I try to use them and this lack of control over the color space is really annoying. The color space thing has irritated me before - there have been several instances where I would have liked to just drag images out of Aperture into a folder only to realize that I would have to export them to have them in the right color space for the web or whatever I was doing (or employ another tool). This post has pushed me far enough to send feedback to Apple about this, and I encourage everyone else to as well. How hard would it be to add an option in the preview preferences to set the color space to sRGB? Maybe if enough of us bring this up, Apple will do something about it for the next version...
As an aside, exporting images from Keynote probably won't tell you much about how the image is displayed. That said, it really should not have you monitor profile as a color space. This is one of the broken things about color management right now. Color profiles like sRGB and Adobe RGB and monitor profiles look the same in that they both map colors to numbers, but they have the opposite meaning. A color profile like sRGB defines how the numerical values in an image should be interpreted (e.g., [255,0,0] should be interpreted as this particular red). A monitor profile is the opposite (e.g., to get this particular red, drive the pixel with these values [255,0,0]). We can interpret color profiles this way as well if we want to convert between profiles, but there is really no instance in which an image should be associated with a monitor profile...
Black, I'm glad you're sending feedback to Apple. As you may know I'm a member of the Aperture Advisory panel and I assure you that I voice my requests for precisely the same things as you've commented on ... namely we need to see which images have previews (and if they're current) and we need a choice of color spaces for previews or they should be sRGB by default.
Thanks to for the clarification of the fundamental difference between monitor and color profiles.
Maybe I am wrong but I recall having read that most video is not colormanaged (most playback devices are not colormanaged).
But apart from this, how does iMovie'08 compare to FotoMagico?
El Aura, iMovie '08 is for creating video productions which is different than a slideshow. Fotomagico is specifically for creating a slideshow although you can save the show as a .mov file if you wish.
I am not going to go into a dissertation here or try to do an analysis of every (maybe completely different) issue each of you are encountering but...
Stop using the OSX browser and you will be much happier. Just user Aperture itself. It is a fabulous image browser for your Aperture image library. Yes the JPGs will still be AdobeRBG but I can tell you after extensive research that if you are using a colorsync aware or color managed application (every thing that uses core image, every thing apple, and just about everything else out there that runs on your mac) AdobeRGB images in the applications are not your issue unless you are uploading them directly to the internet and windows/non-safari users are using them.
RB
if you have a coupon i would love one as i also make many presentations and have been having some issues with color, what about using idvd as a slide show?
All coupons are long gone - sorry!
Ellen
Hi, do you still have one of those fotomagico coupons?
thanks in advance
Ivan
Ellen and El Aura,
I have used Fotomagico and iMovie for slideshows. Though iMovie is indeed designed for video as Ellen mentions, it does a fine job with slideshows.
I feel that Fotomagico does a much better job with the Ken Burns effect and the image quality seems to be slightly better.
iMovie gives you better titles and is more integrated with Aperture, iWork, iLife, Apple TV. It also comes with a mac saving you $129.
Though I have gone back and forth and think both programs are excellent, I am currently using iMovie and am very pleased.
I do use Keynote when talking through my presentations and advancing the slide one at a time.
Hope this helps.
Cheers__ Heath