digital slide shows

[idobelieve]

Does anybody know of a good but simple photo slide show software? All

I want is something where I can create an interactive menu and a

slide show to music that can play on a computer or home

TV/DVD...nothing fancy. I tried out Photodex and thought it was okay

but that you are paying for lot's of unecesary gadgets and gizmos. I

am after simple and user friendly...suggestions?

 

Thanks...

[ericreagan]

If you have access to a Mac, then iDVD works or you can get more detailed with iMovie. Chances are, it's already on the Mac. Can't help you with Windows though.

[carlo_cayetano1]

I'll second Eric's suggestion for any of the Apple software. iPhoto has a simple slideshow setting, you can get fancy with iMovie and iDVD. I believe you can even burn the slideshow to a disk with one of the apps.

[phoneguy]

I'm partial to Adobe Premier Elements, although it has plenty of gizmo's...It's also simple to use.

 

Another good one is <a href="http://www.photodex.com/products/proshow/">ProShow Gold</a>" and it's got a free trial.

 

Mike

[frank_skomial]

http://www.digitalphotoslideshow.com/

[phoneguy]

Oh yeah...Adobe PhotoShop Elements 4 has a very simple version built into it also. Pretty straight forward.

 

Mike

[Brad_]

All the mac suggestions are good. Keynote will let you do that as well.

 

I use iView Media Pro for image management. That will also do slideshows.

[v.anisimov]

Here's a dumb way to use nothing but existing Windows features:

</p>

1. Create a folder with a sequence of screen-sized JPGs (eg 1200x800 or whatever).

2. Copy an MP3, WMA or WAV file with your music into the folder.

3. Using Notepad (or another text editor) create a batch file (eg slideshow.bat) to (a) open the first alphabetically sorted) JPG file; (b) open the music file. E.g:

</p>

---Start file---</p>

image1.jpg</p>

music.mpg</p>

---End file--- </p>

 

Save it as a text file with the extension .BAT</p>

</p>

Then tell the customers to run the BAT file to view the show. By default (maybe not:) the images will open in the Windows "Image and Fax Viewer"so that the user can hit keyboard arrows to see next image

[idobelieve]

Right-O, forgot to mention that I am a PC girl...but I do have access to my signif othrs mac if there is a program that blows all else out of the water. Thanks for the advice so far. I love this forum...

[lex_jenkins]

If you want a really simple, no-frills freebie for making autorun CD slideshows, try Picasa. The "gift CD" option is dirt simple. I use it to burn, well, gift CDs for family and friends.

 

Besides recording full size files that can be printed from any ordinary kiosk (Aladdin front ends for Fuji Frontiers; Kodak dye-something printers, etc.), the gift CD option creates an autorun slideshow. No fancy transitions but you can include captions, speed up or slow down the show, etc. I think it's also possible to burn it with music, tho' I've never tried this.

 

The same thing can be accomplished with Irfanview, another good freebie image handler, but not as easily as Picasa's, which is self explanatory and requires only a couple of button pushes.

 

Picasa is also a competent photo editor if your photos need only minor tweaks. The "I'm feeling lucky" one shot tweak works surprisingly well on at least half the photos I try it with for family snapshots. I don't use it for "serious" stuff because it lacks any noise reduction utility and the hamfisted auto sharpening option increases noise. But it's really not bad for the money ... which is no money.

 

Be prepared for the curious filing system Picasa uses. It doesn't follow Windows standards for folder hierarchy. But it'll automatically ferret out every photo on your hard drive if the defaults are set properly. A couple of times it's helped me locate photos that had been misplaced on the drive.

[david_schilling___chicago_]

Proshow Gold is very nice but you think maybe a bit much....I believe that they have some lesser versions for less $. Adobe Album might be what you're looking for.

[olaf_siebert___zagreb__cro]

Well, if you have CS2 then you can use the webgallery... try flash 1 or 2... simple nice and quick.

[gerund]

Photostory 3.1 by Microsoft is free download for Windows XP users.

It incorporates pan and zoom features for videos, music, and ability to cut cds as well as compress for the web. This has one of the best compression scenarios out there for web videos IMO.

Very simple to operate.

[carolina_arocho]

Microsoft photostory is free. Just download it

You can use Quick time pro, or Windows moviemaker

[ericreagan]

Brad,

 

Hadn't thought about Keynote. I've got it, but never used it. Will Keynote let you burn to a DVD that plays in a standard DVD player?

[steen holst]

I recently tried a bunch of different slideshow software. Here's my results. YMMV!

 

MS Movie Maker: Free and easy to use. The transitions were low image quality, but very easy to edit and tweak the slideshow.

MS Photo Story: Really easy to create basic stuff but awkward to customize/tweak the slideshow.

Adobe Premiere Elements: About $70 I think. Powerful, but non-intuitive. In other words, a little too steep or a learning curve for an occassional user.

Pro Show Gold: About $70. Each to use and pretty powerful. Great for DVD's, but I don't like the web-based slideshows. They require you to install a driver on your computer and I've had a few technical issues with them (a possible orphanned process that renders subsequent atttempts to view slideshow to not work and doesn't work very well with a proxy server)

 

I'm using Pro Show Gold for all of my DVD slideshows. For web slideshows, I'm using Show It Fast. They each have their place in my mind.

 

Good luck and have fun!

 

Steve

[er1]

PRO SHOW GOLD... it's that simple

[b_covey]

The new Adobe Lightroom has slideshow capability. The beta version is free and pretty cool.