Motivation: Use Photodex ProShow Gold for creating top quality photo slideshows
Features: ProShow Gold provides top interface in Windows only for making slideshows

So we decided to take a look at ProShow Gold which camera club members across the Greater Toronto area were praising highly. And as it turns out, they were not wrong – ProShow Gold is like Techsmith's Snagit in its home domain of screen capture – so well attuned to all the needs of its users that it dominates even grizzly multimedia veterans like Adobe and Ulead on its home turf – creating photo slideshows.

Loading up ProShow Gold

If you follow our recommended best practice you have already created a separate folder and copied all the photos you will need for the slideshow to that directory. We have done so by adding nine photos to the mypictures directory so that when we point to mypictures in the Folders windows all the contents are displayed as image icons immediately below in the File List. To move the images from the File List to to the SlideShow immediately below is a simple drag and drop operation. User can do so one photo at a time, placing the photos anywhere in the slideshow.

Or if there are a group of photos next to each other in the File List, just highlight all of them (using the CTRL or SHIFT key with mouse) and then drag and drop the group of photos and place them where you want them in the show. Notice that immediately each slide has a default transition associated with it to the immediate right. Also notice that the duration of the slides and transitions have been set (4 seconds and 2 seconds respectively). To change these durations for all or a group of the slides, just highlight the slides(drag the mouse with left button down over the slides desired or use the CTRL or SHIFT keys). Then change the duration for one of the highlighted slides and it is then changed for all the highlighted slides. Ditto for changing a group of transition durations. This convenience is missing from the video tools.

But the video tools strike back. To shuffle a slide's position in the slideshow is a simple drag and drop operation. Its a bit tricky to do this in ProShow. You must first select the slide and let go of the mouse and see it highlighted. Then drag and drop it to a new position in the timeline. Ditto to remove an image from the slideshow - a bit awkward. Right mouse click on an image and then choose Cut or Delete from the pop up menu for a smoother remove. But having conceded these inconveniences, ProShow comes roaring back.

Right click on the slide and choose Slide Options from the popup menu. The screenshot above shows the Slide Options dialog with 6 custom setting from bottom to top : Background, Sounds, Captions, Motion Effects, Adjustments and Image and Video. Image and Video is the corker. ProShow Gold supports video clips in the storyboard timeline. And in adjustments users can make last minute adjustments for the slideshow only in the image: flip, rotate, and/or modify the hue, saturation, brightness and/or contrast. Add Zoom and Pan or Rotation motion effects for a single slide or group of slides. Add captions and titling to a slide(less vector figures and elements available in Camtasia Studio). Add specific sounds for a slide while controlling the main slideshows background sound. Finally add an individual background slide (including another image – but no transparency control between the two images). In sum, ProShow provides users with unprecedented control over each slide such that stunning effects and styling can be achieved. Users would have to buy say Adobe's Premiere Pro or Adobe After effects at $1000 to get equivalent or greater control and still not be sure of all the same output options available in ProShow Gold.

Transitions

Already we see that ProShow provides precise control of Slides. But it also provides a wide selection of transitions and effects between slides.

In the screen shot above , users see the Transitions popup and the over 280 transitions they have to choose from. But do not fret ProShow makes choosing from this cornucopia very approachable. First the transitions are collected in logical groups of 3 or 6 transitions. Second just click a transition icon and see it immediately played out on the thumbnail image in the lower left corner. Third, ProShow Gold provides a starting default list of 4 transitions: immediate cut, crosscut, fade and random choice in the top row. These are safe choices – chose one of them when in doubt. Finally, with the bottom row of transitions you have a list of the most recently used transitions. So if you are choosing among a group of favorites they are conveniently available. Finally with the LightBox view users can see the complete package designed for each slide.

This is one of the best screens I have seen for applying transition effects and I expect to see competitors paying ProShow the sincerest form of flattery – they will copy it in the future. Finally, ProShow has made certain that the Slide Motion Effects (Zoom and Pan, Rotation) work well with any transition applied for overall excellent transition and effects.

Show Options and Deployment

Like the Slide Options dialog, ProShow also has a Show options dialog and it is also replete with


functions and features. The Show Options page allows users to set Show title and icon slide plus the aspect ratio (TV, CD, or custom). The Caption page allows users to apply a custom text caption to every slide – often used to supply a copyright notice at the bottom of a show. Likewise with the Background page allows users to apply their own background image or color for all the slides. It is the Soundtrack page that is of most interest.

With the Slideshow soundtrack users can add one or more soundtracks to the show including controlling the overall volume and then fade in and fade out effects at the start and end of the show. Even more helpful, users can lower this background sound volume for specific slides – especially those that have their own soundtracks. In addition users can synch selected slides with the show soundtrack. This does not quite match the convenience of the timeline adjustments available with the video tools, but it certainly provides most slideshow directors with ample sound control. In addition in the Edit | Preferences dialogs there are a number of sound effects and other settings that apply during running ProShow that are very useful to know and use.

For deployment Proshow offers 9 options which are arrayed as icon across the top of the screen in the toolbar. They include:

DVD Disc- with control for a number of options including menuing.
Video CD – again with numerous control options for video on CD
Video direct – allows complete video output and compressing control.
ShareShow – automatically sets compressed setting for delivery to Photodex's sharing services.
Webshow – is the most compressed version about 1/3 the size in images and in filesize.
Email - is about ¾ of the original size and filesize – users still may find their mail service choke.
AutoRunCD – is full size and highest quality output
Executable - is a standalone executable of same high quality as AutoRunCD
Screen Saver – ditto on highest quality, now Windows Screen Saver output, .scr.
In short, we found ProShow delivering one of the widest arrays of photo slideshow options with very high quality output.

The screenshot above shows the output options available when creating an Executable. Like many of the other output options creating Executables allows the user to not only add on a menuing system but also to package several slideshows into one large executable. This is a very attractive option when developing courses or galleries of images . Still the most important settings are the Output options.

Users can control quite a number of settings that determine the efficiency of the compression while at the same time the quality can be controlled. There are separate settings for quality of video and audio. For the slides there are 3 settings for image resolution. For video there is one setting for resolution. I our tests we found that manually limiting the image resolution was the most effective way of controlling the compression versus quality trade-off for slide shows like this which are primarily photo images only. However, once you add video, they quickly can dominate the equation. The default setting are good for highest quality images at the cost of larger file size. As soon as you start to lower quality some of the images fall off faster than others. And we have only considered the Executable creation. Photodex would do well to offer users a Wizard for deployment that helped spell out some of the trade-offs to consider in each of the deployment options. This is the only major drawback in an otherwise very capable set of deployment alternatives.

Summary

Photodex's ProShow Gold does not quite ace the slide show creation business but is several steps ahead of its multimedia competitors. The weaknesses in drag and drop on the Storyboard, no vector graphics/drawing tools with text captions, the lack of a true timeline view for coordinating video and slides plus audio are the only major shortcomings. But with the fine control allowed through Slide and Show Options plus the gorgeous output make this $69.95US a real bargain for those putting together not just photo slideshows but broader presentations (just consider the utilities that can deliver Power Point presentation as slide images). If a desktop or projector slideshow is important ProShow Gold delivers top quality results with great ease.