29 replies to this topic

[WeddingPhotographer]

Who is the best professional slide show software?
Sorry on my bad English.

I've used 3
Adobe Flash - CS4 - the learning curve is VERY steep - and it crashes MANY times a day, often taking your work with it. It has the most flexibility and can do the most, but until you are experienced, it can take DAYS to do a few fancy transitions. I cannot make it do high resolution slide shows (1080x1900) that run smoothly. There is often "jerkiness" in complex transitions. These go away if you reduce your resolution to "web" sizes : e.g.:400x600. There is a large user community, but NO direct support from Adobe - at least none that is useful.

SlideShow Gold: a GREAT program for putting out a quick slideshow with integrated mp3 sound. Somewhat limited in transitions. The developer of this has been GREAT about answering email questions, and adding suggested features.

Halfway between the two is SlideShow Studio, from Aquasoft. This company is in Germany, but they sell an English version. Their software allows you to build VERY sophisticated transitions, including "Ken Burns" type effects of transitions, zooming in, and panning across the image, stopping and zooming in at various places. It also does MANY nice animations with text, including entry, and exit animations. It is VERY stable, and seldom crashes. The email support for this program has been GREAT. However, their Forums are all in GERMAN, so there is no user community for English speaking users. This works great for high res (1080x1900), scrolls smooth, and does even transitions. (some are a little blocky looking at high-res.) It also supports multiple aspect ratios (4:3 and 16:9). I've run it's output through a HDMI into a HD TV, and it is very good. It has a built in photo editor that allows you to add very complex modifications to an image. My only complaint is the audio editing is a little rough.

Right now I am using SlideShow studio almost exclusively, but might switch back to Slideshow Gold for speed if I had a fairly simple slideshow to produce, just for speed.

I have tried Flash before but it is very complicated, did you go on a course?

[lilytan]

I think Tourweaver also could be used as slideshow software. Import still photos, publish it as FLASH, or EXE slide show.

[Taraboom]

I am using ProShow Gold. Quite happy with the software. I checked a few other slide show packages before and finally selected ProShow. It is user friendly and has a lot of features.

[mtshep73]

I am using ProShow Gold. Quite happy with the software. I checked a few other slide show packages before and finally selected ProShow. It is user friendly and has a lot of features.

My website about making family photo slideshows currently has 3 reviews of slideshow software with more reviews coming later. Each review includes a short slideshow example created using the reviewed software.

You can access the reviews by going to the page listed below and then clicking on the text link to the software you are interested in.

Visit my Photo Slideshow Software page

[victoryox]

Just get photo dvd burner professional. It works like a charm!

http://www.photodvdburner.com

[Igor Kokarev]

Shortly about new version 7.0 of PicturesToExe Deluxe.

It allows add video clips up to 1920x1080p and mix them with still pictures. You can apply Ken Burns effects (Pan/Zoom) and 3D transformations to video clips.

Instant preview of slideshow (even with video).

Unsharp mask in real time for entire picture (like in Photoshop).

PicturesToExe Deluxe is the most popular slideshow software in the UK and France for advanced users and AV enthusiasts. Almost all AV works on competitions in the UK were done in PicturesToExe Deluxe.

http://www.wnsoft.com/picturestoexe

Version 7.0 Beta available here:
http://www.picturest...deluxe-70-beta/

[monkeyboy7]

I use Keynote to build interactive presentations, SoundSlides and others when I'm building web and auto-run types of presentations, iPhoto/iMovie/iDVD to build simple DVD presentations, etc.

Seconding Keynote. It's Mac-only, but my friends won't stop talking about it.

[Lin Evans]

If you want "professional" level software, the best I've used is PicturesToExe by Wnsoft Ltd. It really all depends on what your individual "needs" are for creating professional level slideshows.

If you are a busy wedding photographer who makes shows for his/her clients, ProShow Producer is very good because it has many automated templates which quickly allow the user to make impressive slideshows with little actual time spend learning the program.

http://www.photodex.com

If you compete in professional international AV competition, you will be hard pressed to find anything better than PicturesToExe which lets you mix video, multiple sound tracks, still images, do three dimensional transforms, rasterize and animated text, multiple layers with incredible fine control of images, sound, video and so on. The great thing is that this is not really "expensive" software and you get lifetime free upgrades for the basic package. It's the #1 choice for AV professionals world wide right now. The images quality is better than anything else available and the flexibility is fantastic. You can make rotating photo cubes, have ultra smooth hardware rendering, export to both PC and native MacIntosh executable formats. You can create MP4, AVI, Exe and directly upload to youtube, iPhone, etc.

http://www.wnsoft.com

Unfortunately, ProShow Producer can't do hardware rendering, can't do 3D transforms so no rotating cubes, etc., but it does have lots of automated templates. PicturesToExe, on the other hand, doesn't have a lot of automated templates, but rather is a nuts and bolts approach which can produce stunning output.

If you want to see what is possible, you can download shows from the PTE (PicturesToExe) forum or from one of several member sites. I have some samples on my own site here:

http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net

Go to the demos page for downloads...

Also you can visit the PTE forum here:

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/

And the unofficial Photodex forum here:

http://www.proshowenthusiasts.com/

Lin

[denverguy]

Who is the best professional slide show software?
Sorry on my bad English.

I hear good things about Fotomagico. As soon as I can squeeze it into my budget, I'm going to give it a try. Anyone here have it?

I just remembered that Fotomagico may only be for Macs and not PCs. I have an iMac so it's not a problem, but if you have a PC, it may not work.

Here's their website.

http://www.boinx.com...agico/overview/

[sendaen]

I just used wondershare dvd slideshow before, I think it's good if you just want to add some effects or making a slide.

[CindyP]

I am trying to compare the three following slideshow creating software:

[*]PhotoStage Slideshown Producer
[*]DVD Photo Slideshow Professional
[*]FastStone Image Viewer
I am a novice but I do not want to waste my money on something too complex to enjoy and I don't want free if it means I won't receive all the enhancements that the paid version has.

The end result is very important to me because; my daughter passed away and I am working with some baby photos and toddler photos and I want to add music, maybe videos, etc....
so you can see why product quality is very important to me but also some simplicity would be nice!



Any help out there, please.

Thanks,
CindyP

[bkriesel]

If you are looking for an Android App I'd give FireFrame a try, http://amzn.to/GF2bwP. I helped write the app. It turns an Android phone or tablet into a digital picture frame. It supports Instagram, Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, and your local images. The paid version is only a dollar http://amzn.to/GF2bwP and if you want to give it a try there is an ad supported version that is free http://amzn.to/Pc0BeG

[reosjenkeri]

you can use windows built in windows movie maker & Nero sliding software & Ulead video software etc. though you want presentation then I will say you will use power point, it is best for presentation.

[jounpla]

Who is the best professional slide show software?
Sorry on my bad English.

well, what are you going to view, photos or words?
PowerPoint is the known slide show software for win, powerful in words slideshow.
If you're looking for photo slideshow, then I'm gonna ask you what for? For personal viewing or for public meeting presentation?
If you're the former, then try Photo+, image browser for mac that allows you to view photos smoothly as photo slideshow on mac. You can also have your favorite music playing as background music.
Well, if you're doing photo slideshow for public presentation, then I suggest you to make videos from photos. This ensure you everything will be OK and you have nothing to worry about. How to make video? Google and you will find tons of tutorials.

[AchimD]

Depends really what you want to use it for.

 

I use Slideshow Pro (http://slideshowpro.net/) for client online galleries because its Flash based  and The Turning Gate http://theturninggate.net/

 for my website. Turning Gate is not Flash based and loads faster. It is also more SEO friendly and allows people to pin to Pinterest which cannot be done with Flash.

 

Both are Plugins for Lightroom and are a breeze to setup. Main thing is my website is build with The Turning Gate so any new Slideshows I build have the website design already in a template.

 

For Client presentation I use Proselect (http://www.timeexposure.com/.) Great software to pick and choose and present photos to the customer. Slideshow is not that great but has fantastic features to present the images in real size and even lets me super impose the images on a photo of the customers home so they can see how it will look like when hung on their wall.

 

Check out my Website at http://adphotography.com.au/

 

Hope this helps.