OVER 2 YOU, 032 (31/05/01)

NEW PERSPECTIVES

How can I make rectangular a photo or painting on a wall in a photo when the wall is at an angle to me, and conversely how can I make a straight-on photo look as if it was being seen from an angle? I wish to insert images into picture frames, which may be at an angle to the camera. Architectural cameras with a moveable lens and a bellows used to be able to do this in order to stop buildings tapering away from them.

Brian Stephens, Penarth, Glam.

Photoshop 6 has exactly the feature you require. It is part of the Crop Tool. There is a small check box 'Perspective', you will be able to carry out both the functions you require with this tool. If you do not have version 6.x but have earlier versions then the Free Transform tool will allow you to Compensate/Create for the distortions you describe.

Rod Wynne-Powell,

I know of two ways of doing this. Paint Shop Pro provides perspective deformations. Unfortunately, it uses a very crude algorithm, which will only give acceptable results for very small angles.

The other is to use a ray-tracing program such as POV-Ray (free from www.povray.org). You create a rectangular object and use the photograph as its pigment. You rotate the object (or move the POV-Ray camera) as required, and then render the scene. If you want, you can draw the frame and put glass in it as well. It is very fiddly, and takes some time, but you can produce quite stunning results.

The part about the "architectural camera" is not quite straight (pardon the pun). If you want to photograph a building from street level without the verticals converging, you point your monorail camera square at the building, then raise the lens parallel to the film as required. If you tipped the camera up, the verticals would converge. You could compensate by rotating the lens, but only to a very limited extent, because parts of the image go out of focus, and you can only stop the lens down so much.
Tony Etheridge,

CALENDAR PRINTING

Do you know of a method, using (say) Outlook or Excel, or of a commercial product which will print a calendar of recurring events with actual dates across a period from an input of fixed date formats - in the form of (say) 3rd Tuesdays in May, August and November?

Eric Trodd, via email

I have used a program called Instant Calendar from a company called Softkey International, Inc. for many years.  It will produce calendars and diaries in any format from Organiser to A3.  It copes with recurring dates, updating birthdays and anniversaries from original date onwards together with events such as every 3rd Tuesday in the month and fixed events and holidays such as Christmas Day - 25th December every year. My program was on a freebie disc from a software manufacturer and is Version 1.0, circa 1994; nevertheless it has run happily on every version of Windows from 95 to ME.

David J Thwaites,

GOLF COMPETITION

I run a golf competition at my Club & the competitors each play 6 rounds over a period of 3 months.  I have to select the best 4 scores out of the six & then assemble the totals of the 4 scores in order to determine the highest 16 qualifiers.  Can anyone produce a formula, which will automatically make this calculation?

Lindsay Macdonald, via email

Enter the competitor's name in cell B3. Enter the result of round 1 in C3, round 2 in D3 etc. and round 6 in H3. In cell A3 enter the following formula (which will sum the 4 lowest scores in the range C3 to H3):
=SUM(SMALL(C3:H3,1),SMALL(C3:H3,2),

SMALL(C3:H3,3),SMALL(C3:H3,4)).

Do this for the remaining competitors from B4 onwards, copying the formulas down from A3. Once completed, select the whole of the data (do not include any headings you may have used) from A3 down and across. Sort the data (A-Z) so that the lowest aggregate score is at the top. Select your top 16 players (copy and paste into another worksheet). If you want to return the list to its original order, click on the undo button.
Pete Phillips,

If the 6 scores are entered into cells A1 to A6 in Excel, then if:=LARGE(A1:A6,1)+LARGE(A1:A6,2)+LARGE(

A1:A6,3)+LARGE(A1:A6,4)
is entered into cell A7 this will give the total of the 4 largest scores
Ian Maddocks,

Clearly, it is possible in Excel to write a formula, which ignores the two lowest golf scores and adds the rest. However, wouldn't it be easier to just delete (or move to outside the row) the lowest score when you're inputting the 5th and 6th round scores, then just add up the row?  The human brain can make life very easy!

John Cavanagh, Toulouse, France

CAPITAL QUIZ

I want to devise a quiz in which one of the questions entails placing a 2-letter word within a capital O. Can anyone suggest how this can be done within Word 2000?

Heather Catterfeld, via email

You can cheat and use the Draw toolbar and select the ellipse. Hold down control while you drag the circle to the size you want or don't hold down control if you want better O shape. Right click inside the circle then select order then send behind text. Next select the text box from the Draw toolbar and form a text box within circle then type in required letters. Right click on edge of the text box and select format textbox then set colour to no line if a box is not required around the letters.
Gary Moulton,

NEGATIVE CAMPAIGN

I've been asked to get 150,000 medium format negatives onto the Internet. If I scan them I estimate it will take about 5 years. Does anyone know of any equipment that could speed the process, or any companies that offer this kind of service?
Michael Clift, via email

The first thing to say about digitising any image is that you must define exactly what the end-use of the image will be. This is essential to allow you to decide on file type and size. Whilst a thumbnail GIF might be all you require for a web site, you will certainly need something like an 18 Mb RGB TIF for reasonable desktop printing and perhaps a 50 Mb file for better quality printing. These may be JPEG-compressed by about a third, any smaller and they will start to lose quality.

There are a variety of scanners and hi-res digital camera backs on the market, but none make it easy for 6 x 6 or 6 x 7 negatives. Michael is right in saying it would take him years to do 150,000. Its not just the scanning, every file has to be opened and checked for cropping, alignment, colour, density and contrast, this all takes time.

The only realistic answer is to use a specialist company with teams of people that can digitise hundreds of images a day. My company iBase has a specialist digitisation unit (see www.imagescanning.co.uk/) and also develop image management software, which allows you to organise files and display the images on your web site (see www.ibase.com/).

Peter Bridge,

There are a number of companies who could handle his request to scan 150,000 medium format negatives using such equipment as the new Kodak HR 500 film scanner. The key is what is his budget? Typical scanning costs for this quantity might be as low as £0.50 per scan but that would still mean a budget of £75,000-.

If Mr Clift would like to get in contact with me I am sure that we could help him to solve his problem.

Chris Blishen,

FILOFAX PRINTING
Can you tell me if you know of a PC software diary/schedule package, which will specifically produce a hard copy of a diary that can be printed off in hard copy format suitable to be put into a Filofax (Personal size paper)?  What I am looking for is a diary that I can maintain on my PC, but print off to update a hard copy every now and then.

Nigel Morton, via email  

I have been using such a package that Nigel is looking for the past 6 years. "Daytimers" originally started out using the Filofax diary format and brought out the electronic version several years ago. The electronic version can be printed out on their paper with different sizes to suit the version of the Filofax that you have.

Bob White,

CAN YOU HELP?

I am looking for software that will allow me to create monograms (figures of several intertwined letters). The only one I could find on the net was Brother's for use on their embroidery machines and I can't see how I could apply that for my purposes.
Graham Milford-Scott, via email

I am trying to help a colleague, who over many years has collated the day-to-day actions of hundreds of RN Ships.

The problem is that the initial files were created on an Olytext machine (I presume a very early word processor). I have been told that by saving the files on the Olytext machine as ASCII files, we should be able to transfer them easily to a PC. This is where the problem comes in - using a standard floppy disk which has always been used in the Olytext, we create the file as an ASCII and place it on this standard floppy, remove it from the Olytext and place it in the PC, but the PC doesn't recognise the disk and asks 'should it format the disk', to which we reply 'no'. We then take a new standard PC formatted floppy and place it in the Olytext and guess what - the Olytext can't read it and asks 'should it format the disk', to which we reply 'no'.

The only other way of transferring the files is by re-typing them - a very long job indeed, or scanning them with OCR software, which is obviously fine if the original copy is clear, but as some of the copy was typed on an old typewriter, the text is not as clear as it could be and leaves much of the text requiring to be re-typed in.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how we can overcome this? I have heard of a company that can transfer the files, but they are asking for around £25 per page and these files could run into 2000+ pages.
Trevor Muston, via email

I am hoping to write a biography of my father in law's Naval service and wonder if you or any of your readers may know of web sites that could give histories of the various ships he served on

J. Snell

Can anyone recommend a program suitable to manage two sports clubs (same computer, different membership)?   We would need a simple database and accounting, also various lists and label printing. Our current program is based on Access, but the accounting is per individual, when subs are paid by family, and running off labels from a query is too complicated for me!

Mandy Simmonds, via email