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Database: Photos Are Bright Spot in The Paperless Revolution

Sunday, June 23, 2002

By LONNIE BROWN

Computers were supposed to bring about the paperless office. Ask anybody who's seen my desk if that promise came true.

Nor is it likely to have happened in your office. Paul Curlander, chairman and CEO of Lexmark, a computer printer manufacturer, recently noted: "Currently, approximately 60 trillion pages of information are printed each year in various formats -- books, magazines, preprinted forms, newspapers, bills and so on -- and then transported in paper form."

Computers seem to have been more successful with replacing paper in another area: Digitizing photographs.

Instead of searching through shoeboxes of drugstore prints, the digital photographer can display the contents of folders on the screen and pick and choose which ones to print or show on the monitor.

One of the ways to show photos on a computer screen is by using a slideshow program that runs the pictures through a predetermined sequence. One of the cleverest slideshow programs is 3D-Album from Micro Research Institute Inc. (Windows; about $40).

The program has nearly two dozen ways to put pictures on the screen, and can be used to make screensavers using personal photos.

It can also be used to make slideshows using all the photographs from a particular folder on the computer. That slideshow can be saved, or placed on a CD-ROM disk, or sent as e-mail. The program's display engine is installed with the slideshow so all the recipient has to do is run the program.

It's fairly easy to use, something that comes about because there are two disks included in the box. One contains the program. The other is a tutorial and demo program designed to let users become familiar with the way 3D-Album operates by walking through the various screens.

To compile a slideshow, users collect their photographs in one folder. Then they select one of two dozens ways they want to move through those photographs.

For instance, the "puzzle cube" format places a photo on top of six cubes. The next picture is brought into view when the cubes separate, rotate, and then move back together to form another picture.

Another method puts the viewer inside a cube. Different photographs are on the front wall of the cube, the two side walls, and the ceiling and floor of the cube. The cube rotates randomly to bring the next picture into view; pictures are replaced as the cube turns so new ones keep coming into view.

The size of the pictures and the speed at which they change are controlled by the user.

A company spokeswoman said additional styles are currently available on the product's Web site for owners of the program (www.3d-album.com). The new styles allow users to show photos floating in water, showcased Hollywood-style with a parting curtain and rolling credits, as murals on the walls of a rotating five-sided exhibit, on the sails of sailboats, on heart-shaped balloons, embedded in a kaleidoscope, or with a backdrop of fireworks, she said.

The slideshow can be set to music by selecting favorite WAV files to go with the program. Text can be placed on pictures, or the user can add comments in his or her own voice.

Once finished, the slideshow can be saved, copied onto a CD, uploaded to a Web page, or sent in e-mail as a compressed file. (The files can become quite large. It's best if broadband transmission speeds are available.) The slideshows can also be used as custom screen savers.

The slideshows are completely self-contained. The recipient doesn't need 3D-Album software to view them.

3D-Album supports 10 languages, including Chinese, Korean, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

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