Ok, so my neighbor walked over while i was working on a DVD im putting together, in it there was a photo montage thing, and now he wants to do it too, only he wants to be able to do it NOW. He downloaded the Adobe Premiere demo, came over with his laptop and asked me how to do it. I have no patience teaching people things when they have no background, call me a jerk, but anywho, my question is, What is a good EASY program for him to use to make photo montages, pans and zooms are a must, obviously. So if anyone can recommend something for him to use that would be great, i dont know of PC programs, im a mac user personally. Thanks for all the help! remember the emphasise on easy...

To the best of my knowledge there is no easy fix. Especially
zooming and moving around an image usually involves learning
some form of keyframing for example.

I had some good results with Vegas. Easy loads pictures and
can even place them on the timline with a default length etc. and
then be animated through pan/crop tool. Fading from one picture
to another is as easy as sliding one over the other.

Hi Riley,

I think there are quite a few programs out there that will allow you to do video photo montages. I remember seeing on a demo disk of a photographic magazine some software that allows you to create video photomontages, but for the life of me I can't remember what the program nor the magazine was called.

I managed to find this: http://www.lumidium.com/index.htm. It will take your still images and then you can do digital rostrum work to them and save it as a DV file. But I don't know whether you can create a montage from different pictures? Might be worth downloading the demo?

All the best,

Ed

dang, i was afraid he would have to learn keyframing... well, thanks for the quick response. Maybe i'll have to spend some time and show him how to do it after all...

Probably the best and easiest program is Imaginate from Canopus. $199. Can download a demo version I believe.

In my humble opinion, tell him to find a copy of Premiere 6.5. Maybe that's the version he has?

Premiere Pro really buggered up the interface and made it tough for a new person to figure it out. Heck, I have been using it since 4.2 and it really confuses me.

6.5 has a nice, easy straight forward sort of motion keyframing that's, dare I say it, intuitive. Unlike it's "Pro" variant. It takes me twice as long to pan - scan a photograph now - thanks Adobe.

And, if you set the preferences to have each image say 5 seconds before import, they will all come it as 5 seconds long. Drop thenin order like a story board and drop that on the timeline. Then make dissolves of 1 sec your preset transition, highlight the whole shooting match and you now have all your images, in order with 1 second fade ups and outs and lasting 3 seconds full frame with fade up and fade to black.

Add music, stir till frothy, top with lime and serve warm.

Now he can go back and add motion effects to a few key images for effect and viola, something he would pay me $150 or more to do.

Sean McHenry
visiting from the PDX10 group

Sean,

I was surprised to see your response to the motion controls in PPro. I haven't been using Premiere as long as you (I started with 6.0, then to 6.5), but I find the motion controls in Pro soooo much better and easier than 6.5. I showed a friend who has never used any editing package how to do a photo montage using motion controls in about 30 minutes and he was on his way. I really like the layout and control I have with Premier Pro when doing photo montages. This is in no way a knock on your preference for 6.5, as we all have our preferences. I was just surprised to see your comment because of how much I like the motion controls in PPro.

Howdy Lloyd,
It's not that they aren't good. In fact, having individual controls of each functin under motion control is great. You can set different timings for each function. What I was suggesting is that under 6.5 it's so much easier for a new person. At least I thought so back when it all started showing up.

I do think it's great but not that intuitive for the average person not used to keyframes. That's all.

See ya,

Sean