While looking through the web, I found an interesting little tool to create your own video slideshow at animoto.com, the process is almost completely automated, so you just add the pictures and text, and select the music and Animoto, creates a video timed to the music with some interesting effects, it’s well worth playing with and you can create 30 second videos such as the one above for free. $3 will also buy you one full length one, which runs as long as you want.

It’s easy to use and works well for me.  You can have 2Gb of space free and any file changes are automatically “synced” to other computers with the same sign on.

So what I did was

• Registered for  My Dropbox
• Installed the software on both my computers
• Moved some of my files into the Dropbox on my main machine
• Left it a while
• Checked and my Laptop had my files
• Now which ever machine I change my data on, it is copied to the other machine automatically and as a bonus,  dropbox makes automatic backups of any changes.
• If your files are over 2Gb in size you can have a paid for account if you want.

So far it’s doing exactly what it says on the tin.  Don’t try and use it on a dial up line though.   Along with the fact the files are kept in sync between you machines it also keeps backups of documents you are working on so, if you delete a few pages and save and then need them back you can recover them from the web interface on dropbox.

Add to that the ability to drop photos into a public folder and share as a slideshow, and the option to share specific folders with other dropbox users and you have a handy tool for little money.

Sure it can all be done in Photoshop CS,  but it’s generally quicker and easier in FotoFusion.  I am a moderator on the Forums and Fotofusion and have assisted in earlier Beta projects.  So if you are looking for a great layout tool try Fotofusion.  Check out my collage and book galleries to see some examples.  If you would like me to use my skills to layout your work ready for printing then, please contact me.

Collages

15 Photos

Northumberland

40 Photos

Kent

40 Photos

Mediterranean Cruise

42 Photos

Turkey - 2007

50 Photos

Jordan 2008

91 Photos

Black Sea Cruise Book

79 Photos

Tunisian Adventure

98 Photos

To use drag and drop simply select the files in Windows Explorer and drop them on to the file list.

See the original release notes for installation and usage with Lightroom.

Download FTP Sender V1.5

FTP sender is free,  however if you would like to send me a donation just click on the button to send me a donation by Paypal (no account needed)

I have completed a change to my PSE 6 xml file generator. To generate files which match the new Elements 7 format.

As for the PSE6 version it simply creates the xml files for you and you will need to add the file to the correct directory for your version of windows. There are details of this process in an Elements Village Post

Download PSE7XmlGenerator

It can be downloaded below.   See Initial Release for more information.

lightroomsender

Just start it up and drop your images on.  Set the longest edge size and the maximum size in Kb and resize the image and save,  or you can drop a bunch to the batch section and do them all at once.

You can get the latest version from http://www.idimager.com/?page=freeware

I like to frame my images and have made a couple of frames in idFramer which people may like.

They all pick up the “Title” field from the image you drop on along with the copyright and add that information to the bottom of the frame.  The “smart” frame version makes the background colour a tone extracted from the image.  Just download them and save them to the same directory as BDSizer and it will pick them up and list them in the framing drop down list.

• Black Frame
• White Frame
• Smart Frame

It’s a very simple program, just point it at your “backup directory for actions or styles, select all the actions/styles you want and then click the button to create all the XML files.

There is a tick box you can use to put all the actions in one dropdown selection, just tick it and change the description to the name you want.

It does not copy the XML files to the correct directory, as especially on Vista this is very difficult to do as Vista will only let the OS or PSE6 write to the correct directories.

There are good instructions for PSE 6 here http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33090

Download

PSE 6 XML Generator

Just put it in a folder of your choice.

PSE 4 was flagged as a non Vista compatible product, but this seems to be mostly issues with the organiser which we don’t use now we have Lightroom.

Firstly I found an article about using symbolic linked drives on the Mac, which lead me to search for a tool to do the same under windows. I found Junction there are a few limitations in that you need to be using NTFS as a file system, but I was so I crossed my fingers and did the deed.

1. Make sure Lightroom is NOT running.
2. Move the “Lightroom Database Previews.lrdata/” directory to the new hard drive.
3. Put the Junction exe in the Windows directory
4. From the command line type Junction “old dir” “new dir” and press enter
5. Start lightroom and your cache is moved.

This is probably a tip only for advanced PC users and its well worth reading though the help for Junction and the Shell Shocked Article before you start, but it’s speeded up my Lightroom no end so it was worth it for me.

New: June 2009

I have just found Link Shell Extension which adds a GUI interface to the Junction Command.   Very Nice and it works in x64 Vista