Slides to get the message across

Press, 22 September 1987, Page 40

Slides to get the message across

By

Gareth Powell

My new obsession concerns creating slides and images using computers. The subject is, in truth, a tricky one and it is difficult to avoid gaining the impression that it has attracted a fair number of snake-oil merchants giving out the old sales moody to mug punters. They promise much, deliver little. On the other hand, there are some quite genuine solutions to the problem — some of them of very recent origin, some of them Australian. Let us start with basics. If you stand on your two feet and talk — even if you have the inherited skills of a lay Welsh Calvinist Methodist preacher, taken with the religious fervour we call “hwyl," you are getting your message across in one way. To one sense, the ear hole of the listener.

Better, far better, to get your message across both through audio — those Welsh notes from my native woodland wild — supplemented and complemented with visual aids. Then you get them through their ears and through their eyes. The more complex the subject, the more essential the video component of the presentation. As I charge around the world giving seminars, I have used a tri-coloured video project system called the Barco, attached to sundry computers, to bring variegated audiences the good word about desk-top publishing. Sadly, this system has rarely worked as I would have hoped. Not because of some design or manufacturing problem with this Belgian-built projector, which was originally designed and intended for video machines. Rather, that I have used computers of a wondrous range of types and outputs to feed into the projector. The projector has invariably responded to this mucky diet by breaking down, not infrequently. Since January, I have been desperately seeking the Holy Grail of perfect visual communication. I have not yet quite achieved it.

But I am close, very close.

First step in solving the problem was to borrow from Toshiba a computer which I- could carry around the world, and which was powerful enough to cope with all the PC programs I use but light enough not to give me spring’s first careless rupture. This computer is the Toshiba 3100 with a 20megabyte disk drive. If it is not the best computer in the world, it comes within spitting distance. The second step was to get from Sharp an ingenious device called a computer projection panel. This plugs into the back of my Toshiba and then lays on the top of an overhead projector so that the screen of the Toshiba is projected on to a cinema screen.

There are a couple of snags.

When the output goes to the Sharp, the screen on the Toshiba closes down, and I must either turn my back on the audience — which is both rude and, given the sort of audiences I deal with, on occasion, dangerous — or I try to guess what is happening on the screen through audience reaction.

A less-than-ideal solution.

I cannot see why this cannot be easily fixed, but the instruction is in ROM so I cannot get at it and, therefore, I live with the problem. Note that there is one reflective-type, overhead projector which does not work with this system. This would be for me the ideal answer except for one thing. We are also still work-

ing in the full glory of monochrome and standard graphics, known in. PCs as CGA. We shall see changes in the near future but, at the moment, I

must be very careful as to what lettering and graphics I am using if the screen is not going to be an unintelligible mess ana lack the excitement that colour brings. Nevertheless, if you have to show a computer program working interactively on a screen, this is definitely the only way to go at the moment. The next step is, undoubtedly, for me to put part of my seminar on this portable overhead projector system, part of it on 35mm slides.

Slide shows, especially where two or more projectors are used, can be exciting, stimulating and keep the audience interested, providing they are of a short enough duration. My guess is that 11 minutes is the absolute limit and then your viewers start nodding off.

Years ago, I produced a series of audio visual packages for Pan American which included a cassette and packages of 35mm slides. They were inexpensive to make, easy to run and had a very good level of acceptance. But the making of these shows was a piece of cake compared with making them for a seminar, because all of those slides were scenic shots of beautiful places and people. With little or no lettering. All the slides I now need are very different. They now predominantly contain lettering and graphs. Thus my quest began. First, I started by asking for quotations from some of the professional slide houses to make a set of slides for me. Shock, horror. Quotations ranged from $27, where I produced the artwork on the computer, to a mind numbing $llO for one single slide. Plainly, there has to be a better answer. When I started investigating early this year, there appeared, in truth, to be none. Kodak’s audio visual department said I could work with the lowish resolution of the Polaroid Palette, or pay the going price, or do without. I carried on searching and found, eventually, other answers. The situation is that you can make magnificent slides — for a reasonable price — in the safety and comfort of your own office. There are several ways this can be achieved.

At the entry level — a phrase beloved of computer sales people — there is the standard Polaroid Palette. This produces immediate slides which can be used to show to a non-critical audience of, say, less than 20 people. The resolution, tied as it is to CGA, is not the greatest. But using an amazing package called 35mm Express you can churn out slides, and with Polaroid’s instant, highcontrast, slide film, you can put a presentation together tonight and show it tomorrow.

35mm Express is one of the best programs that I have seen for making slides in that it makes all the decisions for you. It works on the basis that you are an artistic klutz and that the colours, typefaces, and spacing are better handled by it than you.

The new version 4.0 of 35mm Express allows you to dump data in from Lotus 1-2-3 without rekeying. It still has the automatic layout capability

with eight chart formats to choose from. It also allows you to select up to 63 colours for each image or up to 16 fonts. Do yourself a favour. Do not experiment Accept the slides the way the programmers designed them. The results will be infinitely better than anything you can do. Promise.

There is a tendency to decry this system because the slides it produces are, in truth, somewhat coarse-grained. A little jaggedy around the edges. But they are very fast cheap and cheerful. Under time and cost pressure, they get you out of a jam. And the technology is improving every day. Going a little upmarket is the Polaroid Palette Plus, which works with EGA — a mendacious term meaning enhanced graphics adapter — to produce slides which are a major step forward from the standard version.

Here we need to look into the concept of lines and standards of definition.

Jack-the-lad in the slide making world in Sydney is Harry Hvistendahl, who is the technical director of Dimension Graphics, which imports some upmarket snazzy gear. I have met him only once but the total confidence with which he talks on the subject shows he knows well of what he speaks. He says quite firmly that for public exhibitions — your pukka slide show — 2000 lines is the absolute bottom limit. 4000 lines would be quite the article. 8000 lines is for Hollywood extravaganzas because we have at this point moved beyond the resolving power of 35mm film.

Mr Hvistendahl can prove quite convincingly with a series of slides that in this area you get almost precisely what you pay for. At the beginning, you can opt for a Palette Plus at something over sAust3ooo which will give you a resolution of 640 by 700, will take from three to 30 minutes a slide, offers 16 colours and works from a PC, an Amiga or pretty much any other computer. Perfectly splendid for fast work which is to be shown on a limited-size screen to a smallish audience. Not, however, the article if you are looking for ultimate quality. Coming up a bit, he suggests the Photometric 200 which costs about sAustlo,ooo, has a resolution of 2000 by 1200, takes three to five minutes a slide, offers a thousandodd colours and shades and can accept input from a PC using a variety of type and graphics programs, although it is normally packaged with Video Show which makes it very easy to use with clip art and simple typography. Step up again to the Laser Graphics PFR which, against, costs around sAustlo,ooo, offers a resolution of 4000 by 3000, takes two to 10 minutes to make a slide, offers a range of 256 colours and, again, can accept input from a PC with a variety of type and graphics programs, although it is usually bundled with Mirage to give high-quality artistic output.

This is very probably the way to go for a medium-sized company that has a fairly substantial need for high-quality slides with artistic input.

What you get from this system is excellent depending, of course, on the skill of the operator. It is not idiot proof. But the results are outstanding. Note, that mainframe users are not left out Mr Hvistendahl says that his company will be releasing IBM XL Copy for Big Blue mainframes later this year, as well as a slew of other hard and software for the production of superior slides. I have no experience with the following, but record it for interest Apparently, Techway imports what it calls “the first, low-cost high-quality camera to make photographic slides direct.” There appears to be two versions and the “high resolution” model is, as far as I can ascertain, a 1200-line system. If this is so, one must question the accuracy of the earlier statement as this camera costs $9OOO plus. Prices then soar to $57,962 — which is rather more than I had in mind. The cameras are made in the United States by Dunn Instruments which is, beyond peradventure, a leader in the field of recording coloured images from video and computer input But it is not I hazard to guess, germane to my current quest. All of which is very comprehensive. But there are more and better things ahead. And I am exploring them. For example, you can produce slides of a resolution beyond the resolving power of 35mm film at, say, 8000 lines with a standard computer and a new device called the Image Maker. I know this because I have just done so using an Amiga 2000 with Image Maker lashed on at one end and a Polaroid Palette at the other, driven by some insanely great software from an Australian company called Neriki. Start with the PC end of my Amiga which has the Image Maker attached. (Incidentally, as far as I know, this is the only business computer with which you can have fun.) Image Maker, distributed here by Info Magic, is the combination of two technologies. The first is computercontrolled colour. The second is phototypesetting. Each font you use in Image Maker is contained on a wheel of film enclosed in a hard plastic case that you insert every time you change type. This would be a major pain except for the fact that no slide should ever use more than two typefaces — and one is perfectly adequate 90 per cent of the time.

You prepare your slide originally with software either on a PC or a Macintosh. David Fox, the man in charge at the Sydney end of the importers Info Magic, is so Macintosh affected that he cannot see in colours. As a result, he keeps demonstrating the Image Maker as if it were a Macintosh appendage. Which it is most plainly not. It was orignally designed for the PC, which has colour so that you can see roughly what the finished slide will look like. The software is easy to use.

When the slides are printed out on Ektachrome, the results are sharper than the resolution of the film itself. The cost is about sAustlo,ooo.