The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group A Must-Have Program for Sharing Digital Images Ron Hirsch, Boca Raton Computer Society, Inc. |
If you are involved with digital images and want to make slide shows to showcase
those images, and/or give copies to friends and family via CDs, or several other
means, I strongly recommend a program that you absolutely must consider using.
The program is called Digital Photo Slide Show. It's available at:
http://www.digitalphotoslideshow.com.
Like all shareware, you can download the program, and try it out before you
register it. It has an amazingly low registration fee of US$19.95, and this
includes free lifetime upgrades. The author, Jim Voelker, has done a fantastic
job of creating an easy to use, but very powerful piece of software. It can meet
the needs of advanced users, but can also be easily used by beginners.
In this review, I'll cover many of the highlights of the program. For complete
information on this program, visit the Web site above, and browse around. Then
download the program and try it out yourself. If you have a broadband Internet
connection, the download will take less than a minute. Dial-up users will of
course experience a longer download time, but it is worth the effort.
Periodically I've reviewed shareware programs but I review only those programs
that I feel are 5-star ratings. This program is actually better than my top
rating of 5 stars.
What Does the Program Do?
The program does a variety of things, and does them all well. One key feature is
the capability to generate a self-running slide show, with lots of customized
features. This show can be viewed on your computer. And, via a few simple steps,
you can produce a CD with the slide show on it, and give it to friends and
family to view on their computer. There are several options/ways for giving your
slide show to others.
You can:
See "Other Features" for other capabilities.
How Does It Work?
The user assembles a group of photo images, and places them in a designated
folder. It's best to have already edited/cropped/retouched these images as
desired.
Once you have this folder of images assembled, the bulk of your work is done.
With the straightforward procedures that the program offers, it will take you
only a few simple clicks to achieve the result you want.
I've been using the program to generate slide shows from a large collection of
scanned images of friends and family, starting back over 60 years ago. I go
through the necessary steps, and then copy the final material onto a CD. That CD
is set to be an auto running slide show.
So, when friends and family put that CD into their computer's CD player, a list
of all the slide shows on the CD comes on screen, and they can choose the one
they want to view. When that show is over, the listing comes up on screen again,
and another show can be selected.
The beauty of this setup is that each slide show is just another subfolder in
the root directory of the CD. So, when one wants to add more slide shows, all
that is needed is to add more subfolders to the master folder on your hard
drive, and burn another CD with all the new material you've added.
Other Features
The program is loaded with all kinds of nice features that users can choose
from. If you go the http://www.digitalphotoslideshow.com Web site, you can get
complete information on everything about Digital Photo Slide Show. Here's a
partial listing of features:
There are now 135 transitions to choose from. These transitions are used when
the slide changes to the next slide. There are wipes, dissolves, and you name
it. The user can choose a different transition for any slide, or let the program
just cycle through the full library, or a lesser library by selecting those
desired. And, the display time for each slide can be set, either individually,
or via a single entry that will apply to all slides.
A caption text box can be added to any slide, and there are lots of nice
formatting features available. Fonts, colours, size and position of the text box
are all user-selectable. The text does not become part of the image itself or
change the image in any way, but it is associated with the proper image
automatically by the program.
When the images are displayed on the computer monitor, they automatically adjust
their displayed size to the maximum that the monitor screen can display. This is
a plus. The user doesn't have to worry about playing with the image sizes - it's
all automatic.
At the top of the slide show display, there is a toolbar where viewers (should
they desire) can pause the show, advance forward/backward manually, and a good
selection of other options also.
Background music can be played, by simply adding the music file into the folder
containing the image files for that show. Add as many selections as you want,
and they will be played in alphabetical order.
Slides are also played in alphabetical order. In my slide shows, I have the
slides named by using the year and month, such as 6306, as the first characters
of the filename. So, I don't really have to do any renaming - I want them in
chronological order. But, users can set the order for the images simply by
adding a three or four digit numeric string to the beginning of the filename. If
the file was named "picnic.jpg", and you wanted this to be the first slide,
change the name to "0001picnic.jpg." Remember, you must use leading zeroes, or a
group of slides that are numbered from 1 to 12, without leading zeroes, will
play in this order 1, 10, 11, 12, 2, etc. With the leading zeros, they'll play
as 01, 02, 03, etc. This is the way most programs sort a list of values.
Miscellany
Throughout the years I've produced many "slide shows", all of which were
personal in nature, and used thousands of images I've scanned from negatives,
slides, and prints (actually, going back to before I was born, and that's a long
time ago).
I've used Microsoft PowerPoint, Corel Presentations, and an "album" program
called Diji Album. They all did a nice job, and they all had capabilities for
distributing the "shows" to others. The one problem that they all had was that
they had to have each page composed individually, as each page had to have the
image sized, positioned, etc. The beauty of Digital Photo Slide Show is that I
don't have to do this anymore. All I have to do is put my images into a folder,
and the program will position and size them automatically for me. And, since I'm
now in the process of generating a whole new batch of shows, my workflow will be
far more efficient.
I will of course have to manually add captions, but I've decided now that the
only caption on most pages will be the date. That simplifies the caption box
size and position - it will be the same on each page.
Future Features
I've been having some dialog with the author (Jim Voelker), and I listed below a
few of the things that I'd like to have him consider in the future.
An included utility to help the user rename images (using a 4-digit numeric
string) to set the desired order.
The ability to use not only background music, but voice clips and to have
independent control of both. Various of my present shows in other programs allow
the use of voice clips to be inserted when a given slide appears, and
temporarily suspend the background music, and then have the music restart when
the clip is finished, or when the next slide appears.
Right now, the "menu" that appears when there are multiple shows involved is a
file listing, via a Windows file manager-type display. I suggested that a
listing that wasn't so generic would be more attractive.
Conclusion
The future features noted are absolutely not needed to make this program a very
worthwhile addition to anyone's computer. The combination of present features,
price, and user friendliness make this program a must have in my book.
So, visit the author's site and get more information, if needed, and definitely
consider registering this program. It's a winner! I'd appreciate any feedback
you might have along the way. Reach me at
ronhirsch@adelphia.net.
Reprinted from the August 2003 issue of Boca Bits, the monthly magazine of The
Boca Raton Computer Society, Inc. (BRCS). Ron Hirsch is a regular contributing
editor to Boca Bits. There is no restriction against any non-profit group using
this article as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given the
author. This article is brought to you by the Editorial Committee of the
Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an international
organization of which Melb PC is a member.
Reprinted from the February 2004 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
