Announcing PhotoTrophies

[Bob Reeves]

This all started when the Tulsa Gluedobbers found out Polaroid film was no longer being produced. Previous to PhotoTrophies we were shooting a Polaroid of the contestant and attaching it to a preprinted background or plaque. This made for a great trophy as it was personalized, fairly inexpensive and received well by the participants. Everyone likes to have pictures and this worked out well for both the club and contestant.

I have been writing digital imaging software for the amusement industry for longer than I care to say and decided to see what I could do to help the club out with a computer program that would merge a digital photo into a pre-designed background. One thing led to another and several months later PhotoTrophies emerged as a full featured, ready for prime time utility backed by a well established software company.

Please see the post in the classified section for more info and I will be happy to answer any questions you might have. Also please understand all samples have been reduced and compressed to fit the upload requirements of the message boards.

http://stunthanger.com/smf/index.php?topic=10965.0

[gary akers]

Hi Bob
thanks for coming up with a new fun way to award flyers efforts !!!!!!!  Do you have to have photoshop software to run the awards program? Will if run with just Windows XP or ?
thanks
Gary Akers

 

[Bob Reeves]

Hi Gary,

No, PhotoShop is not needed to create Trophies/Awards, the software is a stand alone package that contains everything except the ability to create background/border images. It does have the ability to overlay two lines of text on the background in any font that is on the host computer. This is in addition to the Place and Event text that is overlaid during the trophy generating process.

If you need more than two lines of text you can load the background, apply the first two lines, save the background and repeat the process to add as many lines of text as you could possibly want. This Static text can be placed anywhere on the background and formated Vertically Up, Vertically Down, Horizontal or Horizontally Centered.

I talk about PhotoShop on the web site because we have it and it is a good graphics program to use for creating custom backgrounds from scratch. It has became the standard for graphics artists but really too expensive for the average Joe. This is the reason we decided to include one custom background along with the 5 already included.

We simply can't ask our users to not only buy PhotoTrophies but also buy PhotoShop. This would negate any advantage in cost saving over hardware trophies or plaques which is one of the big reasons to buy PhotoTrophies in the first place.

Almost overlooked your second question..

It will run on anything from Windows 98 to Vista.. This was a challenge as Microsoft is trying hard to force developers to forget anything older than XP. We felt it needed to be able to be used on everything from that older laptop in the closet to the latest whizbang whatever. We felt any club could borrow a laptop, inkjet photo printer and a camera from it's members 2 or 3 weekends a year..

I have 3 old laptops sitting around no longer being used, not worth anything but still work. Am reasionably sure I'm not alone and other than being a little slow they would all work fine with PhotoTrophies.

[James Lee]

A note to say that the Tulsa trophies done by Bob with Elwyn's photos look really nice!!!   
thanks
Jim

[john e. holliday]

I thought they looked great.  Reminded me of the last contests at Pawnee Rock, Ks.   Emmy slept most of the way home with hers.  DOC Holliday

[Jim Kraft]

One thing that is really nice is to have the picture of the plane along with the date you won so that you don,t have to wonder later what plane you were flying when you won the trophy. I have won quite a few ( more than my share ) of spirit of 52 awards. When I go back and look at the trophy's it is sometimes hard to remember which plane I won it for. With all of the info and the picture on the trophy you don't have to wonder. Thanks Gluedobbers.