A Quick Photo Slide Show, Think Fotomagico
I'm sure most of you have shot a lot of photos over the holiday season. And I mean lots of photos, it's pretty easy to do. Maybe too easy. Who holds back with a digital camera? A one gig SD memory card I picked up at Sam's Club for my daughter cost $15. Since storage is cheap, always shoot those family snapshots at the best quality the camera will take. You can always edit later and delete photos you don't like, but you can't go back and get better quality photos. OK, it's time to step up to the plate and do something with the photos. Don't just let them sit around like the days when photos would end up in a shoebox in the closet never to be seen again. Now what program do you use? There's plenty to choose from. I'm going to talk about a few: Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express, iMovie8 , iMovie6 and iDVD.
1. Final Cut Pro is a good choice if you already spent $1,200 to buy the new software, you have plenty of horse power. Don't bother on a G-4 unless you have a lot of free time to watch it process. Next you need to know how to use the program. And like I said, you need some time. Trying to move photos with those wire frames is a lot of work and tedious.
2. Final Cut Express is a better alternative just because of the lower price at $199. I don't want to spend a week on this project. I'm not Stephen Speilberg making a new sequel to ET. I want to get this thing done in a few hours.
3.iMovie8. Haven't tried it don't plan on it. Well maybe. It's tough to go out and buy the new iLife suite for $100 to get the new iMovie8 which has less feature the older version.
4.iMovie6. This has been my video editing program of choice for years. It's ease of operation for video and stills is great. Plus, it has two tracks of audio with decent control. You can you use the Ken Burns effect to give your photos motion. It has a much easier learning curve than Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express. One disadvantage is the photos can have motion from point to point but, must stay on their horizontal access. You can't give them any rotational motion.
5. Your can use iDVD to make your slide show but it is very rudimentary. Leaving you with no real choices for creativity.
None of these programs, have a quick way to make screen saver and stand alone slide shows that will fill an entire screen with good quality pictures. I don't know of a program which will take care of all of these features.
Choose your intended use of your slide show:
The choice is for a slide show or screen savers for the computer.
Use this one for making a DVD for use on your television.
Pick this one for computer projectors.
Probably one of the most overlooked software programs for creating a quick professional program is FOTOMAGIO by Boinx software. It would get my five star rating if I had a rating system. Easy to use, fast, great interface and provides you with either a way to make slide shows with music for screen savers, regular display on the computer or a DVD. The only problem is the audio track is very simple. If you want to use more than one song, you need to do some mixing with a program like Audacity or Garage Band and then import the track into FotoMagico. This really is a pretty easy to work around.
The speed which you can put together a professional slide show with photos is amazing. The software features a timeline where you can pick photos from iPhoto within the window or pick photos from other folders on your computer. It's easy to set the time and add a transiton between you photos. The best feature which I think set it appart from other is the ease of setting still photos into motion (the Ken Burns Effect"). Two simple window do the trick, one for the start and one for end of your motion. It tackles this easily by use two simple rotation wheels that set the size, tilt and location of the start and stop of the motion effect. It tackles this much more intuitly than iMovie or Final Cut Pro. iMovie uses very small windows and Final Cut use wireframe has a much stepper learning curve.
Next you add your much from the iTunes library. It does give you the option of automatically setting the time of you photo to match the song. If you're putting together a quick slide show for the family with a single song you are done. One weakness of the program is the sound editing. I just need a few more options here. With only one audion track you can have more than one need start the next song after the one before finishes. There is now way to fade in or out or overlap songs with the program.
My workaround is to export the slide show as a full version quicktime movie and then drag it into iMovie for the few cooler titles and the audio. Then I send it to iDVD. Another way to solve the problem would be to make your audio track fire with Audacity or Garageband and then import it to Fotomagico before you start.
This is the perfect program for someone who wants to put their kid's soccer photos to music, pics from a party or even a portfolio of photos together to display using transitions, titles and yes, the ever so popular "Ken Burns Effect." (OK not everyone knows what the Ken Burns Effect is.) That's where the photos come to life moving and zooming in and out. This program does much more with the "Effect" than iMovie does and you can compete with Final Cut Pro. That's the $900 Apple video program plus, it does more. It costs $49 for the express and $129 US for the pro version and you don't need to take a seminar or buy a big expense tutorial book at Barnes and Noble.
The program features all the basic transitions: Cut, Fade, Dissolve, Linear Wipe, Circular Wipe, Slide, Push, Twirl, Zoom, Aperture, Flip, Cude, Shuffle, and Topple.
Leaning this program is very easy. There's A very nice free tutorial that can be found at the Teachers Corner website: http://www.teachers-corner.org/visual_helpdesk/previous/lessons/lesson8.html.
The cost is $49 US for the Express version which according to the developer can export to iDVD, Toast, for the Web, Apple TV. iPhone and iTouch. Standalone players and screensavers do have a watermark. The Pro version at $129 . More information can be found at http://www.boinx.com/fotomagico/overview/.
Speed, a free tutorial, a easy learning curve, lot of great features, an affordable price for the express version and a little high priced for the pro version although I own because in the long run it is worth it. I highly recommend it. - Robert Lachman