just a gift to all who browse

and wander sleepness through the night

aiming high, a rose for you

in hopes it brings you some delight.

Craig

Craig,
How very nice of you to post a gift to us "night owls". Nice image and the poem too (did you write it ? )
Thank you :classic:

Nice poetry, Craig, and a lovely moon-rose.... but, I was expecting animation!
;)

thanks, martha, cj :)

yes, i wrote it as i was posting last night. i've been playing with this same image now for a while. i've got easily over 60 different looks for this thing and several composite layer files i've saved. it's one of my pics i got from my 35 year old negatives i scanned into the computer to clean up. i also printed this out on a 6x4 glossy paper. looks nice.

if i ever get a decent flash program or better slideshow type program that i can embed music into, i'll probably do all these images of this same flower up as a slideshow/animation, so there's where the animation part would come in, cj. though i suppose i could make this one wink at you, cj :)

Craig

cj,
here is your animation :)

click here (http://65.5.254.8/The_Rose_5.wmv)

this is a large file, so 56k'ers be warned.

i've changed the address and location of this file. it was on a friend's server and using more bandwidth than i wanted to use from him. he never complained, but i knew it was consuming a fair bit, so i moved it.

where i moved it to is now a web server on my own machine! this is pretty cool. the server software is called 'Abyss Web Server' and allows a window's based machine to BE a web server. since i have a static ip address and a decent bandwidth that WON'T go down with use, i've put it here. however, i shut this machine off at night, so those trying to access it at night (central standard time) may find they get an error message.

Craig

Craig -- I am (almost) speechless!!

I hope that many others here will be able to access your animation -- it deserves attention in return for the attention you paid in creating it.

I lost count of the different images and transitions -- which are made all the more intriguing by the timing to the music. Don't know if you just grabbed music that was handy, but I love your choices -- "The Rose" always gives me goosebumps, and Conway Twitty's growl always gives me goosebumps!

Thank you for sharing your beautiful creation -- creations. Well done!!
:cool: :pleased:

thank you, cj :)

no, the music wasnt just a random choice. i'd been planning this for a while. the picture was part of those i cleaned up from negatives. i really wanted to do something with those and just kept altering that one to get the many renditions.

and since joining RetouchPRO i've been resurrecting a number of things i own. the music was on a casette that i wanted to convert to digital. i finally found the means to do that and now have it on my harddrive. so, the lightbulb finally went off that the two, the pictures and the music, deserved to be together. the biggest difficulty was in finding something to do this with.

i had used macromedia's studio mx 2004 demo before and that would have been my preference, but the cost of that program is a bit steep for just hobbying, so i had to find something else. i asked around in the forums, but nothing else i found was really satisfactory. i had played around with microsoft's moviemaker, but it's a far cry from studio mx. still, it had enough of the basics that that's what i ended up using.

and yes, the timing was tricky. MM (moviemaker) is fairly primitive in what it can do, but it does have a timeline that can be adjusted. you'll notice that the file name is the_rose_5. the 5 refers roughly to a version number. and about the last three versions were having to do with tweaking all the timing. not an easy thing to do when the program keeps locking up and you have to kill it ;)

microsoft mm is a somewhat weird program. it's a freebie that comes with XP, i believe, and i can see why. no one would ever buy such a thing. what i cant figure out is why they dont upgrade it. it has potential. but the interface is a bit clunky and the whole program feels like it's just not finished. oh, and it locks up, especially after an auto-save. thankfully, it just auto-saved and it usually does recover its own save. i suppose i have no right to rant. i mean, it is free and i did produce this animation with it. still, it would be nice to see an upgrade.

anyways, thank you for the kind words. it was fun to produce :)

one last thought on this. i've done a couple of these now and where they may not be of commercial quality and are certainly using copyrighted works by others, the thought of producing these things for sale is intriguing. but, who would buy these and how would you sell them? they are great for putting on a web site and fun for viewing here on RetouchPRO, but is there a market for this sort of thing? i dont mean the traditional 'music video' where the music is the main emphasis, but rather photo collections and particularly photo art collections that are set to music where the art is the main focus. and in what medium would this work best as? would anyone go to wal-mart and buy art cd's or dvd's for playing on their cd/dvd player? is there any kind of stand-alone hardware for viewing things like this? it seems like something of a neglected area. we have computers, dvd players, tv's, tv's that hang on walls, laptops, hand held computers (pda's) and so on, but where's the digital picture frame that could play animations/videos/music?

at any rate, thank you, CJ :)

Craig

wow. 73 views since i posted the flowers 'movie', and only one comment. come on, folks, i'd almost rather have you spit on it than say nothing! ...(almost) :) i do know the site was down for a while, so i know that was part of it, but when that's the case, tell me!

Craig

Indeed Craig, it is so beautiful ! :nod: :) one wonders how come so many watched it and no more comments than that from CJ, I plead guilty of not having said anything though. I remember seeing it right after you posted it and also was very touched by the combination of the music and the transitions of the rose and the variety of colors.

As a defense I can say that it was very late in the evening and I could barely keep my eyes open, left the reply for the next day and I guess forgot to do it.

I can realize the work it involved and also the love you put in creating it.

Again thank you for sharing it with us :pleased:

Regards - Martha :wavey:

Hi Craig,
Thank you for sharing. It is truly a lovely piece and it is obvious how much time you spent creating the images and putting together the slide show. Nice to have so many talents.
~Nancy~

thank you, martha, and thank you, nancy :)

i also realize some of those views are from guests who cant post.

Craig

Man, that Rose movie is awesome. I just sent the link to my next-door neighbour. She is 75 and a terrific artist, mainly still life and birds. She is mad keen on doing slide shows with her iMac but I don't think it has occurred to her to put all her paintings in a slideshow movie. I just know I shouldn't have sent it; she will be around here asking never ending questions about her Macintosh. But she is a great neighbour.

Ants

Craig

I knew you were clever this just proves it, what a nice way to get up in the morning ! ! !

As for selling etc I could see that there would be a market with wedding 's and special occasions or presentations, but not down wal marts (Asda here)If these where burnt to cd or dvd would they work ? I have seen one done but not sure what software was used.

Again when we upgrade our pc we will be attempting to use moviemaker for our digi cam ( it is supposed to be one of the best and easiest programs for this )

It does get a bit down heartening when nobody comments (especially when you KNOW you have done good work ) but we got there in the end, hopefully
:bow: :bow: :bow: :bow:

Palms

a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
how trivial and how trite

you see one rose, you've seen them all
the thorns, what a nasty bite

on second thought, I've seen Craig's rose
with it's many colors bright

i think I'll spend a little time
finding my softer side tonite

Dave

What a talent - and what patience to put this all together.

It's a long download but truly worth it folks.

Don't miss this - and don't forget to thank Craig for all the hard work.

Regards

Bob Mc

That's a good one Craig. Really nice. The recitation is reminisent of the John Denver song "Perhaps Love."

Lyrics for that can be found here: http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/denver-john/perhaps-love-11323.html

Steve

deadants,
thank you!i hope she enjoys it. just make sure she knows the song is copyrighted by someone else. my only justification for 'borrowing' it as i have is that i do give credit and it is free advertising for whomever is currently holding Conway's copyrights. but technically, if someone wanted to get mad over this, i'd be forced to remove it or even subject to a fine, i suppose.

palms,
thank you!
yes, you can burn windows movie media files to cd. nero can handle it and i'm sure plenty of others. hadnt thought of weddings. birthdays, vacations, yes, all might have a market. i wonder what the legalities of doing something like this combined with paid for downloaded music off something like itunes would be. if the recipient had paid for the music and used that music for a personal movie/slide show which someone else had cobbled together, i would think it would be ok. but this stuff has gotten so slippery of late, i'm not sure.
movies off a digi-cam. ok, havent tried that yet. i do know that movie maker 2 was a bit fussy at times. crashed several times while i was using. i think it has something to do with the auto-save feature. so, save often!
and yes, i feel acknowledged now :) seems i need to advertise within the forums more ;)

dave,
very nice! and thank you :) so, you think my movie is a chick-flik ay? ;)

thanks bob! you guys are great! all of you :)

steve,
thank you :) and thanks for that link. great resource! been wanting some words to some songs.

so again, thank you all :)

Craig

Craig, I don't think you have any worries with my neighbour, It only occurred to me last night that she won't be able to view it as she won't have Widows Media Player on her Mac. So I will show her your rose movie when she comes around here.

I use iMovie on my Mac to do slideshows. But sometimes you might want to have the ability to move around a photo, this can be done with a programme like Photo to Movie http://www.lqgraphics.com/software/phototomovie.php
Another one, which is pretty good, is Still Life 2.3.4 but it is a Macintosh only program. But to give you an idea of what these types of slideshow programs can do, check this out. http://www.dontremain.com/eliz/index.html This link takes a little while to load but is well worth it. Also it requires QuickTime. I think there is a market for this sort of thing.

I just finished a project for the New South Wales Fire Brigade, which showed a series of photos of the Fire Brigade that were taken from the late 1880’s to the 1950’s. I also used animated plugins, which gave me flames and drifting smoke. So if you are looking for a programme that gives you some flexibility with Effects and transitions etc. Try and find one that has the ability to accept third party plugins.


Ants

:nod: Very enjoyable Craig, thank you! This is the first time I've become aware of your animation. I doubt I'd have the same patience to work on an image and produce so many different results! So for that alone, and besides the work put into your animation, you deserve congratulations.

Ants - I like the look of Photo to Movie, thanks for the link!

[QUOTE=Kraellin]
palms,
thank you!
yes, you can burn windows movie media files to cd. nero can handle it and i'm sure plenty of others. hadnt thought of weddings. birthdays, vacations, yes, all might have a market.

Thinking about it there is even more ideas like Family trees, Class Photo's etc etc could be a bit of a bummer with the copyright of music, unless you can compose and do your own ! ! ! ! ! ! !


Palms

deadants,

thank you for that link to 'photo to movie'. that looks very similar to moviemaker only a bit more sophisticated with the moving camera shots and so on. i hesitate a bit over it because of the quicktime format, though. quicktime tends to always want things in that smaller size, like the other link to that tribute to betty.

that was quite a remarkable tribute and very nicely done. i was a bit concerned over some of the blurring that was going on during that movie, though. i just wonder if that was from the quicktime format, the photo-to-movie software, or perhaps some of the original photos. it looked mostly like a compression thing where you compress things down to make them viewable on the web and all those pixels start moving around a bit oddly. still, even with that, it certainly communicated a very loving tribute.

nonetheless, i downloaded the trial version for windows and might try it out.

animated plugins? ok, that's a new one to me. so the smoke and fire effects were animated? how clever. and photo-to-movie has this feature of animated plugins?

neve,
thank you :) i have a few other small animations around the forums as well. one is that rocky landscape picture somewhere in the art forums and another is the japanese garden one. surprising how a little animation can change things.

Craig

Hi Craig,
I think the blurring is the compression artifacts. I know the ones I have done for DVD 16:9 widescreen it's razor sharp.

The Photo to Movie software is just to do the panning, zooming and rotating. Even though you can do this in moviemaker, you have much more flexabiiity. After you have the photos constructed the way you want in Photo to Move, you then export it out as an mpeg, quicktime or whatever. You then import it into moviemaker. In my case iMovie. Once I have it in iMovie, I can then add the effects and transitions etc. iMovie comes with a good set of transitions and special effects but there are quite a few software companys now getting on the plugin bandwagon.

Here's a sample photo with fire plugin. It's quicktime.
http://www.geocities.com/wheelham/FireBrigade.mov

ok, you threw me there and i had to check the photo-to-movie site again. here's a blurb from there: Photo to Movie is the advanced way to turn your digital photos into a spectacular QuickTime movie. Using an extended version of the Ken Burns effect, it will literally change the way you look at your photos forever. You can zoom, pan, and rotate over your photos, blending them together with transition from one photo to the next. Add titles and music and you have a high quality movie ready to burn to DVD. from what i can tell from that, you dont need to export it to moviemaker at all. it says it can do the transitions, add music and so on. or, am i reading this wrong?

that's the fire brigrade one you did?

Craig

That was one of the photos with the flame plugin effect.

Photo to movie does do exacty what it's web site claims but it does not allow you to add the fancy plugin effects. You will need to export your movie to quickime. You can then import it to your movie editing software which support the plugins. I don't know whats available for PC that will handle plugins but I'm sure there must be software out there that does.

I guess I could have converted my little demo to Flash before I uploded it, but I forgot I could do that.

deadants,

ah, ok. photo-to-movie to quicktime to moviemaker. not sure if moviemaker can use plugins or not. that was pretty much the first time i ever seriously used it. what i really wanted was macromedia :)

nice fire brigade movie, btw!

Craig

Yes, you now have the order correct.

That photo was used in the opening sequence with the titles and Fire ground sound effects. It then goes on to show the difference between the 1880's and present day fire fighting techniques.

They were going to do a power point presentation but my brother who is a Station Officer in the Brigade ask me if I could spruce the thing up a bit. The first thing I suggested was dump the powerpoint and go with something that won't have them falling asleep. Anyway, after countless powerpoint presentations, they were to say the least, delighted with the finished product.

Ants

Anyway, after countless powerpoint presentations, they were to say the least, delighted with the finished product. hehehe, sweet :)

Craig

Hello Kraellin,

Like the pic of your rose...one of my favourite flowers...there are many....I like the softness of it....downloading your animation now...but going to send you my fave rose..as they say one good rose dererves another...just watched your rose animation and its truly beautiful...i saw lots of my favourite effects in there and a few new ones....well done...but sorry the music is not my kind....The rose i photographed over a year ago...i did something with it in paint shop pro 9, i made the mask and then did a dreamy effect in autofx free plugin for photoshop and paintshop pro...sorry i cany remember all the details but at the time i wasnt taking a lot of notes!!!!

Kind regards Patricia Kay

thank you, patricia :)

the rose was one i took over 30 years ago, along with many others. it was my pleasure to do this one up as a slide/movie show. i'm glad you enjoyed it :) and no worries about the music; conway twitty isnt for everyone :)

love your flower! if you have more i'd love to see them. and if you're (or anyone else, for that matter) feeling adventurous, why not do one (a slide/video) up of your works?! :)

Craig

Hello...Just a quickie for you....have found my original photo of the rose so i am sending now...i did a little animation of this rose ages ago when i got psp9...in animation factory...i will have to look through my cds as i have saved it somewhere...its not fab and i have no idea how to add music to it...i have tought about doing a cd each for all our girls...4 of them... of all the nice photos we have taken over the years ...thinking about it it would be nice to add music...another little project to add to my ever growing list...i will send more roses as the days go by if you would like... 30 years, sounds like me i save things for ever...

Kind regards Patricia Kay. :wavey:

Hi Again...just thought i would send this of THE rose, looking a lot different!!!!
This i did in psps9 in the effects browser, colored with intense primaries and then wrapped it in circle wrap...Think thats it as its a year since i did that one...
Kind regards patricia.. :ditsy:

thank you, patricia :)

Craig

Hi Craig,
Thought it time to send another rose,this one i removed the background and did the dreamy effect in dreamsuite...dreamy..

A very Merry Christmas and a Healthy and Happy New Year to all!!! :nod:

Kind regards Patricia Kay

very lovely :)

what is dreamsuite?

Craig

Hi Craig,
Dreamy is a free plugin by autofx, i have done lots with it and still have lots to learn, you can have it as a stand alone or to photoshop or paintshop pro, there is a thread here in the forum...Free autofx dreamsuite dreamy and mosaic plugins dream suite by Danny Raphael...i have posted some pics in there too and i think the link is there if you want to download it and have a go...
Kind regards patricia kay :classic:

patricia,

the only thing i see on the autofx site is 'free downloads', which usually doesnt mean 'free product'. it means you can download for free, not that the product is free. all of the items i find for 'free' are 'demo' versions, which usually means restricted use of some sort, either in terms of limited number of days you can use it, or limited save and print or some other restriction. have you found this to be the case for the autofx stuff?

craig

Hi Craig,
Here is the link to the completely FREE dreamy plugin Dreamy: http://www.autofx.com/freeplugins/dreamyphoto.asp?id=7
But you can read more about it on dannys thread Free AutoFX DreamSuite Dreamy and Mosaic plugins, Dream Suite
DannyRaphael ...have a look i have sent a couple more of my efforts...agree about the demos...but when i saw this was really a free one i just had to add it to my collection....
Good Luck..... :nod:

patricia kay

patricia,

thank you. i jumped through their hoops and finally got it :) that's pretty cool. i'm attaching one image i played with already. the first image is the original, the second the filtered one. nice effects :)

craig

WOW CRAIG that is blumming beautiful!

Speak to you in email Craig

Thank you

legacy,

thank you :) ! i made it with movie maker 2 that comes with windows xp (i think). there is a comparable one called storymaker 3 from microsoft also that's even easier to use, though a bit more difficult to sync the music to the frames of the video.

there's another thread on this stuff as well. i think it's in the 'software' forum if you want to find out more.

and sure, send me macromedia mx 2004, photoshop cs2, any spare movie dvd's you have lying around, your cat, your dog, some of your chocolates, a new car, and your first born child ;)

craig

Here is a new flower using Steve111 watercolor in Impressions.
I lightened the flower part a little more to bringit out after I brightened the whole pic.
ydelle

Craig,
so glad you got sorted with the dream suite plugin....its a lot of fun and i think you will enjoy...lovely dreamy effect on the pic of the girl....

Ydelle
Liked the effect on your flower pic...what is steve 111 in impressions, is it an action or script kind of thing???
Have that flower in my garden...do you know the name of it???

regards patricia kay

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ONE AND ALL!!!!

Sorry it is in impressionist plugin I got from Danny. The flower is cornflower and this is also in my garden.
Going back to the Steve111 watercolor I don't know if it works on everythng because I tried it on another flower ( I am trying to make a grouping) and it didn't work well- any suggestions Steve?
ydelle