projection photos

[typesoup]

'kay, so I've done powerpoint stuff a long time ago, but I've never done a photographic retrospective for projection. Luckily, this isn't a professional job or I wouldn't have taken it! However, it's a lot more important than any professional job I could ever imagine.

This is for my dad's 80th. I guess I have to format it in PP, burn a disc, and will have a projector available there; my sister's bringing her mac, so we'll use that to interface.

The question is this:

When projecting photographs onto a screen, are there original size considerations, etc? I know this seems like a stupid question, but I'm receiving such a huge range of sizes and and pixel densities that I don't know whether to reject smaller ones (under 750 kb) or whether to make each photo uniform in size, etc. I'm just clueless about this particular medium.

Thanks in advance.

[Ovaltine]

My Aunt had this type of thing done for my grandparent's 50th anniversary (she had it put on VHS so we could all have a copy). The photos being different sizes was fine, they are, after all, memories (this is if you're talking size in reference to physical dimensions). I forget the optimum size you need for slide shows, I don't think it's terribly high though.

[urstwile]

Best idea is to find out the pixel dimensions of the screen you'll be projecting onto. That'll give you a clue.

Also, you'd don't have to do this in Powerpoint, you could do it as a PDF. Acrobat has some presentation capabilities, similar to Powerpoint's transitions, etc.

[typesoup]

Ooh, thank you both!

[urstwile]

Sounds like a potentially very moving project, typesoup. I wish you the best with it. :)

[Two-Toe Tom]

the projector just projects what you would see on your computer screen (if you're using a computer), so you just need to make it look ok onscreen (i.e. images should be about 1024px x 768px or whatever your screen resolution is).

[urstwile]

Actually, I've kind of found this to be not true, Tom. What looks good on my screen doesn't necessarily look good on a blown up projector screen. Which is why I try to find out the pixel dimensions of the projection screen instead. Either that, or I size it to screen in terms of pixels, but up the rez to 150 dpi so it looks crisper on the projection screen.

I'm not an expert on this by any means, but it does seem to make a difference.