Need help with photo editing software please

[pinkoos]

Hello,

My wife and I are throwing my parents' a surprise 70th birthday celebration this weekend. This is gonna be kinda a big affair, in a hotel ballroom with about 150 people including family members secretly flying in from out of town.

We've prepared a slideshow to be running while people are eating dinner with our DJ providing some background music.

Anyway, most of the pictures in the slideshow are before the digital era, so I had to scan them in. What I did was first scan each of them in and then used Preview to crop the photo to include a little bit of white background underneath each picture.

Within that white background, I used Preview's annotate tool to enter a caption. However, while we were working on these photos, we just entered the caption without paying attention to the font size, type or color, thinking that we can easily change it later.

However, when I tried to do that last night, I realized that once the caption is entered and the photo is saved, the text is no longer editable (I know, momentary lapse of reason...we had a lot on our plate at the time we were doing this - preparing for the hurricance, etc.).

So, now I need to figure out a way to find a (hopefully free) editing program for the Mac that will allow me to "erase" the text (ie, maybe "rub" it out) and then re-enter text in the same area using the proper font type, size and color.

I know there are a lot of graphics guys here, so maybe one of you can point me in the right direction.

Thanks in advance!

[lost in space]

pink,

You might try Seashore, stripped down GIMP.

Seashore

[pinkoos]

lost in space wrote:
pink,

You might try Seashore, stripped down GIMP.

Seashore

Thanks! Will check it out this evening as I am at work and don't have a Mac handy to use.

[Mr645]

See if Graphics Converter is installed on your Mac. If you you can download it for free

http://www.lemkesoft.com/

[tenders]

Using GraphicConverter to strip out the old caption will lose a generation of resolution when you save it, and it will be quite time-consuming.

I would do this using PowerPoint.

Import the existing jpgs, one per page, and keep the old caption. Use a PowerPoint text box ON TOP OF THE JPG with a white background and the fonts you want to cover up the old caption.

PowerPoint does slide shows very nicely.

(I'm guessing the iWork equivalent does something just like this but I haven't used it.)

[pinkoos]

tenders wrote:
Using GraphicConverter to strip out the old caption will lose a generation of resolution when you save it, and it will be quite time-consuming.

I would do this using PowerPoint.

Import the existing jpgs, one per page, and keep the old caption. Use a PowerPoint text box ON TOP OF THE JPG with a white background and the fonts you want to cover up the old caption.

PowerPoint does slide shows very nicely.

(I'm guessing the iWork equivalent does something just like this but I haven't used it.)

That's another option. Thanks. Yeah, I'm trying to find the way to do this quickly as the party is this Saturday night and we still have a lot of stuff going on post-Ike, not to mention that my parents are staying with us right now b/c they still haven't gotten power back. Makes it hard for me to work on this until after they go to bed!

[Article Accelerator]

This is easily (and nicely) done in Keynote.

[pinkoos]

lost in space wrote:
pink,

You might try Seashore, stripped down GIMP.

Seashore

Thank you thank you thank you! Seashore worked great. Worked on the slideshow over the last couple of nights. Opened up each picture in Seashore, used the "eraser" tool to erase the text, saved the file, opened it up in Preview and re-entered the caption with the appropriate font type, size and color.

I also tried the Keynote/Powerpoint route as others mentioned and while that would have worked as well, I found this route to be quite easy with minimal loss of resolution.

I cannot thank you guys enough for the advice and suggestions.