Glen Barrington
Forum Pro
They all seem to have serious flaws.
Software I have tried:
PhotoShow2- Easy to use, but very little control. Can't limit music to individual photos. Can't use mp3's. No real abilitiy to precisly time your show. The design is just too cute for my tastes. I expect the splash screen to say "Hello Kitty" every time I boot it. I sent them an email telling them that while I liked certain features; overall, the product is too limited and I asked if they had a more powerful product. They sent me a reply saying how pleased they were that I enjoyed PhotoShow2 so much and ignored my real question. So it appears that their marketing department consists of morons. When the marketing dept is so lame, how can you have any faith in the rest of the company?
ACDSee fotoAngelo - I found the user interface to be a little difficult to understand in V2. Odd, V1 seemed to be very straightforward. Typical of ACDSee, keep tweaking the user interface till no one wants to use it. But it looks like they merged fotoAngelo V2, whole cloth, into ACDSee V6. I don't know why, I hate it now that I ALWAYS feel like a new user when I use it. V2 has more control than PhotoShow2, but no real timing capability or it is hidden so well I can't find it. I like ACDSee overall , but it seems some of their products are de-evolving.
PicturesToExe - It has a lot of what I want. But the user interface is real ugly (I'm a photographer, aesthetics are important to me) and it's kind of clunky. Buttons have text cut off so you can't really tell what the buttons do. It doesn't create a smooth workflow. It is a chore creating an attractive slide show. The control of their timing issues are odd. it adjusts the display time of the photos to make sure the show and the music end at the same time. The transitions seemed limited and unimaginative to me. It looks like a couple of guys got together and wrote their own package in Delphi or Visual Basic and they are learning as they go. Maybe version 11 or 12 will be what I'm looking for.
Microsoft PowerPoint - This is just awful as a slideshow maker! Yeah you can do it. But forget any timing issues. To be fair, it performs well when you need VERY tight control over text placement on the slide and if you want text to appear in the background and not on the photo itself. (The other slide show programs seem to think you always want to place text in the most stupid places possible on the picture itself, sometimes I'm smarter than that!) It won't compile to an exe and you need a runtime display version to put it on someone elses PC. It's kind of like driving a nail with a screwdriver.
CyberLink MediaShow V2 - This is getting closer, the timing control isn't as powerful as I want it to be. But the transitions were VERY slick and imaginative. you can also burn to CD's and DVD's. It's pretty to look at, but it FORCES you to change your screen resolution to some weird size like 800 X 600. I'm not sure what this will do when you try to show the slides on TV. And the interface, while pretty, is kind of counter intuitive. You can import Powerpoint documents as slides so the combination of the two sounds interesting. I was using the Demo package,so I'm hoping some of my reservations will be resolved in the purchased version. BUT, I read in another thread that this product will have no more upgrades, so it is essentially a dead product. Then I noticed that you can buy it for $10 US on Ebay and other Online software sellers. For that kind of money, I ordered it, but it sure sounds like Cyberlink is dumping existing copies. We'll see when it gets here. I'm kind of nervous about this one, but the price was too good to pass up.
Why can't someone develop a slidshow package that gives you precise timing control over sound and image? Allows use of many different file formats (both image and sound) Compiles to exe files. Writes to a variety of media, allows you to zoom in or out on a portion of a photo, and allows you to pan across/back or up/down an image to simulate movement? Ideally it would have a cost of less than $80 USD. But I'd pay more if I liked the package.
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G. Barrington
Teradata Certified Professional
Software I have tried:
PhotoShow2- Easy to use, but very little control. Can't limit music to individual photos. Can't use mp3's. No real abilitiy to precisly time your show. The design is just too cute for my tastes. I expect the splash screen to say "Hello Kitty" every time I boot it. I sent them an email telling them that while I liked certain features; overall, the product is too limited and I asked if they had a more powerful product. They sent me a reply saying how pleased they were that I enjoyed PhotoShow2 so much and ignored my real question. So it appears that their marketing department consists of morons. When the marketing dept is so lame, how can you have any faith in the rest of the company?
ACDSee fotoAngelo - I found the user interface to be a little difficult to understand in V2. Odd, V1 seemed to be very straightforward. Typical of ACDSee, keep tweaking the user interface till no one wants to use it. But it looks like they merged fotoAngelo V2, whole cloth, into ACDSee V6. I don't know why, I hate it now that I ALWAYS feel like a new user when I use it. V2 has more control than PhotoShow2, but no real timing capability or it is hidden so well I can't find it. I like ACDSee overall , but it seems some of their products are de-evolving.
PicturesToExe - It has a lot of what I want. But the user interface is real ugly (I'm a photographer, aesthetics are important to me) and it's kind of clunky. Buttons have text cut off so you can't really tell what the buttons do. It doesn't create a smooth workflow. It is a chore creating an attractive slide show. The control of their timing issues are odd. it adjusts the display time of the photos to make sure the show and the music end at the same time. The transitions seemed limited and unimaginative to me. It looks like a couple of guys got together and wrote their own package in Delphi or Visual Basic and they are learning as they go. Maybe version 11 or 12 will be what I'm looking for.
Microsoft PowerPoint - This is just awful as a slideshow maker! Yeah you can do it. But forget any timing issues. To be fair, it performs well when you need VERY tight control over text placement on the slide and if you want text to appear in the background and not on the photo itself. (The other slide show programs seem to think you always want to place text in the most stupid places possible on the picture itself, sometimes I'm smarter than that!) It won't compile to an exe and you need a runtime display version to put it on someone elses PC. It's kind of like driving a nail with a screwdriver.
CyberLink MediaShow V2 - This is getting closer, the timing control isn't as powerful as I want it to be. But the transitions were VERY slick and imaginative. you can also burn to CD's and DVD's. It's pretty to look at, but it FORCES you to change your screen resolution to some weird size like 800 X 600. I'm not sure what this will do when you try to show the slides on TV. And the interface, while pretty, is kind of counter intuitive. You can import Powerpoint documents as slides so the combination of the two sounds interesting. I was using the Demo package,so I'm hoping some of my reservations will be resolved in the purchased version. BUT, I read in another thread that this product will have no more upgrades, so it is essentially a dead product. Then I noticed that you can buy it for $10 US on Ebay and other Online software sellers. For that kind of money, I ordered it, but it sure sounds like Cyberlink is dumping existing copies. We'll see when it gets here. I'm kind of nervous about this one, but the price was too good to pass up.
Why can't someone develop a slidshow package that gives you precise timing control over sound and image? Allows use of many different file formats (both image and sound) Compiles to exe files. Writes to a variety of media, allows you to zoom in or out on a portion of a photo, and allows you to pan across/back or up/down an image to simulate movement? Ideally it would have a cost of less than $80 USD. But I'd pay more if I liked the package.
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G. Barrington
Teradata Certified Professional
