Beckham Digital

Has the exe file for the majority of presentations, apart from interactive ones, now passed the baton to embedded mp4s

I think the idea is sound and worthy of a try, but its also a very difficult technique to pull off. You're asking rather a lot of the viewer and I have a confession to make. I found it a bit too slow for my taste and I reached for the cursor control keys to skip through to the end when I first viewed it. You appear to have around 30 slides, but we're really being introduced to just one image. You're asking the viewer to watch this one image for almost 4 minutes. Even with a stunning image and superb Photoshop work, one image presented in 30 slides is expecting an awful lot from your viewers. You're doing a lot of cloning on the image and unfortunately that is a little too obvious. Its because your cloning over a cloned area and that creates a pattern. Our eyes pick out that pattern easily and it attracts our attention for the wrong reasons. At the start of the sequence and this can only be a personal view, the title is too much in my face. On a 27 in monitor, that huge text and red cartoon like font doesn't set a good first impression. A smaller, simpler text in a neutral colour would be far more stylish and better in my view. At the end of the sequence the register is off and as an image fades from one to another, there is a moment of visual disorientation for the viewer. The colour is a nice touch, but am I the only one who thinks this is one of those times where ending on a gloriously coloured image would be a positive thing. Reduce the length, find music with a slightly better pace and in Photoshop, the route to this technique may be better served through layers and layer masks, not cloning. Cutting things out tight may not be the best way.

Perhaps the reason few people comment on slideshows is cowardice and I include myself in that category too. Whoever makes the first comment, to some degree they set the scene and because no one likes to feel isolated or out of step, there can be a tendency for others to follow the crowd. If the next views are contrary to those already expressed and perhaps not so positive, the pressure is strong to back away from making any comment, unless its positive. Another issue is that to make really good comments, it takes time. Perhaps all it needs is one or two of us to step in and make honest comment and others may then follow. However, what will kill this stone dead is what has been seen on forums like this (in the past, not now) and is rife on social media right now. A contrary opinion needs to be respected, but quite often it isn't and others then gang up on those who have made a comment they don't agree with. My comments: This sequence is a pictorial slideshow and its pleasant to view. The music is fine and matches the pace nicely, but would I watch it again or recommend it? Probably not. The sequence depends primarily on the images, but in my view there are not enough of them and it leans too heavily on technique. If your going to use Photoshop techniques, I want to see them a little better executed. I know you have to start somewhere, but what we can get away with in a single image is not quite the same as a sequence of images. I don't see this show as being dominated by the third image. I feel its better described as a series of composites. The start of a slide show is where you set the scene for your audience, but here the first image is probably the worst in the sequence. The eye is drawn straight away to the bottom right corner, where there is a host of processing errors and they are isolated against black, which makes those errors stand out. If the viewer sees these issues in the first 3 images, it doesn't bode well for the rest of the show. If we are not careful is can colour our judgement. The impression I have is that you wanted to make a slideshow. but really didn't have quite enough images of sufficient variety and you turned to technique to stretch them out and (I've been there too) it hasn't worked that well in my view.

Another great set of images, especially from a brief stop. I recall a visit to Chania in 2008 just before we left for Australia and your slide show prompted me to look at the images that I have on an internal drive on my PC. I particularly remember that sticky uppy thing on the sea wall. Great show

I am inexperienced at this, but you have to be impressed that once I found I had to award a star to post my reply, I awarded the minimum number I could.