[ale] NewbieQ on OO/Impress for photo slide shows

[Geoffrey]

John Mills wrote:
> ALErs -
> 
> With no prior experience I'm using OpenOffice 'Impress' to package about 
> 100 digital photos as a slide show. Since the files are good quality 
> photos, the resulting presentation is getting _BBEEEGGGG_ (c.250MBy). The 
> problem: it's become glacially slow to work on!

Reduce the size of the images?

> What is a good image size/resolution for JPEG slides to be viewed on 
> computer display - say 1680x1050 (WSXGA) or smaller? Would the answer be 
> very different for a typical digital projector (bearing in mind the 
> viewing distance would be considerably larger and having no idea of the 
> usual projector's resolution)?

I would make them fit the size of the smallest expected display device.

> Is there some automatic way to have the slides imported (or alternatively 
> saved) in a reduced format, or should I use some other tool like GIMP or 
> ImageMagick to resize them? (They aren't all the same size due to some 
> cropping and some images coming from different cameras.)
ImageMagick:

for fn in *.jpg;do
convert -resize 50% $fn new/$fn
done

> 
> If most users have Ms 'PoserPoint' to view the slides, should I expect 
> major problems with a presentation exported from OpenOffice as '*.ppt'?

I would certainly test it in advance.

-- 
Until later, Geoffrey

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
  - Benjamin Franklin