Ulead CD & DVD PictureShow User Guide

Ulead® CD & DVD PictureShow 4 makes it easy to create entertaining photo album slideshows suitable for any occasion. Turn your photos into dynamic slideshows complete with music, transitions, captions, narration and eye-catching effects in just three steps. Over 60 Instant-Show™ theme templates in categories such as Family, Holidays and Vacation combine meaningful themes with rich special effects for stunning results. Dramatic pan and zoom motion effects and transitions guarantee your slideshows look like they were made by a pro! You can even correct problem photos with ExpressFix™, the built-in photo editor. It’s easy to produce outstanding slideshows every time.

Understanding your project elements
In order to build a properly organized slideshow, it is important to understand the basic elements of a project and how each of them is related.
Slideshow album, slideshows, and slides
A slideshow album is composed of the photo and video slideshows as well as your project menu. A slideshow is made up of either a collection of your photos or a single video file. A slide includes the photo, its decorations and captions.

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Ulead PhotoImpact 6 - Stamp Photo Manipulations

To create a unique portrait using a custom Stamp built from family photos.
Making your photo Objects:
1. Choose 6 - 10 snapshots family members. The photo you want to use as your main image object should be made from at least a 5" X 7", better still, an 8" X 10". The other objects should range from 1/2" to 1" in height to give your stamp some variation. Scan them into your computer or have a friend do it for you. I sometimes use a digital camera or have a digital version made when my film is processed at my local Photo Center.

2. Open one of your photos. Select the Lasso tool. Draw around the head and torso. To add to the area, press ‘A’ and press ‘S’ while selecting the unwanted area to remove it. You should have something similar to this:

3. With the Selection still visible, press Ctrl + C, then Ctrl + V; you now have an object floating on its own layer above the original. Drag the object onto the Easy Palette. I put mine under My Library in a sub library named Family Objects.
Name the object in the Add to EasyPalette dialog window. Do the same until you have 6 – 10 objects in your library.

Building your Stamp:
Open a new file the size of your largest object. Stack all your objects on top of one another.
Do not include the main object you want to use in your image.
Save the file in .UFO format and close the file.
On the Attribute Tool Bar, select Add Stamp; when the Open dialog window appears, navigate to where you saved your UFO file and click Open.
Open a new file.
Load your new Stamp. Make some tests using the different Stamp Attributes. Close the file.

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Ulead VideoStudio 11 Reviewer's Guide

Ulead VideoStudio 11 offers two editions to let consumers choose the range of features they need, at different price points.
Ulead VideoStudio 11
This easy-to-use yet powerful video editing and disc authoring software is aimed at the consumer who wants a simple way to get videos and pictures off a camera, do some editing to polish it, and burn it on to a disc that will play well and look good. Ulead VideoStudio 11 makes it easy to capture video and pictures, add titles, effects and music, and create great-looking videos and DVDs.

Ulead VideoStudio 11 Plus
The Plus version provides video enthusiasts with a more powerful video production package, and offers full High Definition capabilities. Users can capture and edit HD video from HDV or AVCHD camcorders, author HD projects, and burn to HD DVD discs. In addition to the same editing and authoring tools in the standard version, it supports Dolby Digital 5.1 audio creation, and six overlay tracks for more creative picture-in-picture overlay effects. It also offers more output options to mobile devices like iPod, Zune™ and PSP™

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Understanding SAP R/3 A Tutorial for Computer Scientists

Learning Objectives Participants will
- break the "language barrier" of R/3 terminology
- understand R/3's fundamental architectural, database and language concepts
- be able to relate R/3 to their own research and development work
- have a conceptual basis and reference material for a further study of R/3

History of SAP Software
1972 SAP “R/1”
• Innovation = Standard Software and Real Time Computing
1983 SAP R/2
• Innovation = Integration of Applications (Mainframe-based)
1989 SAP R/3
• Innovation = Relational Database, Client-/Server-Architecture, Platform Independence

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Image-Based Lighting

Image-based lighting (IBL) is the process of illuminating scenes and objects (real or synthetic) with images of light from the real world. It evolved from the reflection-mapping technique in which we use panoramic images as texture maps on computer graphics models to show shiny objects reflecting real and synthetic environments. IBL is analogous to image-based modeling, in which we derive a 3D scene’s geometric structure from images, and to image-based rendering, in which we produce the rendered appearance of a scene from its appearance in images. When used effectively,IBL can produce realistic rendered appearances of objects and can be an effective tool for integrating computer graphics objects into real scenes.

The basic steps in IBL are
1. capturing real-world illumination as an omnidirectional, high dynamic range image;
2. mapping the illumination onto a representation of the environment;
3. placing the 3D object inside the environment; and
4. simulating the light from the environment illuminating the computer graphics object.

Figure 1 shows an example of an object illuminated entirely using IBL. Gary Butcher created the models in 3D Studio Max, and the renderer used was the Arnold global illumination system written by Marcos Fajardo. I captured the light in a kitchen so it includes light from a ceiling fixture; the blue sky from the windows; and the indirect light from the room’s walls, ceiling, and cabinets. Gary mapped the light from this room onto a large sphere and placed the model of the microscope on the table in the middle of the sphere. Then, he used Arnold to simulate the object’s appearance as illuminated by the light coming from the sphere of incident illumination.

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Care Notebook Tutorial Basic Computer Terminology

You will hear these computer terms used throughout the Tutorial. If you are fairly new to computers, these definitions may be helpful to you in following the directions in this Tutorial. However, the step by step directions provided in the Tutorial will help you navigate fairly easily.

Browser - This is the program you use to surf the internet. There are several internet browsers available, some of the most popular are Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Netscape Navigator.
Click - To tap one of the mouse buttons. If clicking doesn't work, try 2 quick taps (double-click). In some instructions, click may mean double-click. If one click doesn't work, try double-clicking. Default--A value or setting that a device or program automatically selects if you do not specify a substitute. For example, word processors have default margins and default page lengths that you can reset. The default drive is the disk drive the computer accesses unless you specify a different disk drive. The default can also be an action that a device or program will take. For example, some word processors generate backup files by default.
Download – to transfer data from one computer to another. Downloading usually means to "receive" data and upload means to "send”.
Field – (also referred to as a form field) An area of a database record, or form, into which a particular item of data is entered . A field holds exactly one type of information about an item or subject. For example, on a form, there may be a Name field, an Address field and a Phone Number field.

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Performance Characterization in Computer Vision A Tutorial

The discipline variously known as Computer Vision, Machine Vision and Image Analysis has its origins in the early artificial intelligence research of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Hence, roughly two generations of researchers have pitted their wits against the problem. The pioneers of the first generation worked with computers that were barely capable of handling image data — processing had to be done line-by-line from backing store — and programs almost always had to be run as batch jobs, ruling out any form of interaction. Even capturing digital images was an impressive feat. Under such difficult conditions, the techniques that were developed were inevitably based on the mathematics of image formation and exploited the values of pixels in neighbouring regions. Implementing them was a non-trivial task, so much so that pretty well any result was an impressive achievement.

The second generation of researchers coincided with the birth of the workstation. At last, an individual researcher could process images online, display them, and interact with them. These extra capabilities allowed researchers to develop algorithms that involved significant amounts of processing. A major characteristic of many algorithms developed during this second generation was the quest for optimality. By formulating and manipulating a set of equations that described the nature of the problem, a solution can usually be obtained by a least-squares method which, of course, is in some sense optimal. Consequently, any number of techniques appeared with this ‘optimality’ tag. Sadly, none of these papers were able to provide credible experimental evidence that the results from the optimal technique was significantly better than existing (presumably sub-optimal) ones.

We are now in the early years of the third generation. Computers, even PCs, are so fast and so well-endowed with storage that it is entirely feasible to process large datasets of images in a reasonable time — and this means it is possible to quantify the performance of an algorithm. As a result, the vision community has finally started to turn its attention to issues related to testing and comparing algorithms: performance assessment. The most visible (no pun intended) aspect of this is the competitions that are often organized in association with major vision conferences. These essentially ask the question “which algorithm is best?” Although a natural enough question to ask, it lacks subtlety and is potentially rather dangerous: if the community as a whole adopts an algorithm as “the standard” and concentrates on improving it further, that action can stifle research into other algorithms.

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