Best Method to create slideshow.

[Scotchy]

Hello!
I'd like to start by THANKING everyone on this forum; CinC is a WEALTH of knowledge that I have learned so much from. You guys are amazing.

I have an issue and I am hoping to draw from your experience and get this figured out!

For three years now, I have been the photographer for our local Ranch Rodeo. It has been a terrific experience and I'm thrilled to have this opportunity. (My husband and children take part in this event among many other cowboys/girls!!)

My idea is to take oodles of quality images and create a slideshow with them, set it to appropriate music and give one to each participant. Sort of a way to get my images and name out there and thank them for participating.

The first couple of years I shot with a Nikon D90 and using "Magix - Photostory" muddled my way through it, but ended up with a pretty decent DVD slideshow. No real problem beyond my own knowledge limitations.

Last year I upgraded my computer to a pretty powerful machine running Windows 8 with quite a lot of RAM and upgraded the storage to 3TB. I also upgraded my camera to a Nikon D800 (large image size, hence the computer upgrade). I tend to shoot in JPEG fine for these rodeos. There is literally 100's of images by the days end. I am a Photoshop CC customer; using primarily photoshop itself. I also utilize ACDsee as my image organizer.
As I changed computers, my "photostory" program I'd been using for slideshows was no longer compatible with my new computer. I have found little information on the web other than glorified ads as to the best program to invest my $ in, but I had found some information stating that Photoshop itself has a decent slideshow option. I began using that, and while I do find it user friendly, I am now finding my file size too large to operate smoothly; it's almost stuttering through it, and it keeps "thinking" with each mouse click. It often doesn't want to open or save if it does open.
In the end I'll end up with probably 100 images on the disk when/if I can complete it. About 7-10 minutes to my estimation with music.

My questions to this lengthy story are as follows:
1. What type of slideshow software do others utilize? Do others make a slideshow with MANY images? From the tutorials I can find on the internet it sounds like photographers put maybe 10 images on a disk?? That can't be can it?
2. Those who do create slideshows, what steps do you take to create a quality product?
3. Have you found there to be limitations as to how many images you can use? (Of course disk space is the ultimate limitation; however, at this point the software program doesn't even know where I'm saving to)
4. Should I be resizing my images from my D800 before I even begin? These files are huge!
5. Is a DVD disk my best option for putting the slideshow on? Are there other options?

I do apologize for the lengthy post, but I wanted to be a thorough as possible!! I am quite frustrated at this point - I know there has to be a way to get the result I'm searching for, but I just can't quite figure it out.

I THANK YOU so much in advance for ANY help you are able to offer!

Jen

[Kris V]

My daughter uses PicturestoExe for her family pictures.
It can create DVD's, and save the slideshows in most popular formats to play back on computers, tablets or other mobile devices.
She says it's very easy to use. I'm not familiar with the program, so I'm just passing on the info I got from her. She uses Windows 8.1.

[shumicpi]

You can easily create any kind of slideshow by Microsoft PowerPoint. It has lots of application embedded on it including picture, link, different graphics etc. I use this for making slideshow.

[wobert]

Lightroom makes a slideshow easy-
Features are- *easy selection of images from the LR library (no re-sizing needed). *Image Titles can be shown with image, *Reorder images as wanted. *Background color wash or image pattern, *Simple Intro & End screens (Create more detailed title slides in Photoshop), *Audio possible. *Export in different resolution quality. *File output as .mp4 file-type.
Main limitations are- No transition options (only "fade"), Fixed time for each image.

Also a + for "Pictures to Exe" as mentioned by Kristianna -does everything- transitions, overlays, Ken Burns effect, etc- but has a fairly steep learning curve for the fancier results.

[LocalHero1953]

Since you're distributing the slide show, I guess this will be by DVD or memory stick? And you can't be sure what computer power and software the recipients have. Some will have computers with much less RAM than you.
So you will want to resize your images to a typical, reasonably sized PC or TV screen. As these are just being distributed for display, there is no reason not to use JPGs, though with minimum compression.
I am not familiar with dedicated slide show software, and others are more knowledgeable. When I have done this sort of thing (non-photographically) professionally, I have used PowerPoint which allows you to create a standalone slide show for distribution, so the recipients don't have to have PowerPoint themselves.

Edit: I should say that, if you resize images in this way, you shouldn't find yourself too limited in the number of images to include by DVD or memory stick size.

[Geoff F]

For me, the answer is easy. Proshow Gold from Photodex.

I tried several cheaper trial versions but quickly ditched all of them.

Proshow comes with a large easy to follow instruction book which is easy to follow, but quite simple once you grasp the basics.

Early this year I produced an hour long DVD video for our local history society containing photos, narration, captions and music. Over 100 copies sold so far.

Yes, as others have mentioned, resize your images to suit screen size; or other output requirements. Some output formats will auto resize to somewhere around 800 pixels by 100 dpi (or a little less) so you might as well do that yourself and get everything perfect. Then you can also do a little final sharpen for best results.

Then simply drag the images across to a preset 'timeline' of blank spaces and add sound if required. There are quite a lot of special effects if required.

Your output format will depend on the actual use. For example, some computers won't work with TV DVD formats and the other way around. So find out how it will be played before creation. Proshow can handle a wide range of formats.

[NorthernFocus]

If you are a PC user, Windows Moviemaker works fine for what you are describing. The interface is simple and intuitive. Definitely size the images to the ultimate size that you intend to display so that you can control the quality. Nowadays probably standard HD (720px tall) is good and doesn't use too much bandwidth. Here are a couple of examples of ones that I've put together. One is of a dog agility event and the other of photos from a trip to Australia. Both set to music.

http://www.northernfocusphotography....9369/e5cface1e

http://www.northernfocusphotography....96580/e9bc5dd9

[proseak]

Jennifer,

Do you have Nero on your computer? If so, it should have "Make Photo Slide Show(DVD)". I found this to be very fast...once I got the hang of it. It makes discs that will run in a standard DVD player. I have no idea how many images you can fit on any one disc - I did one with several hundred, I recall.

The downside is that the image quality is DVD video only.

[Scotchy]

Thank you everyone! I will look into each suggestion and hopefully find the solution. I do apologize; I had been looking into this for some time with little progress, but wouldn't you know it - now looking at the other recent threads, I see someone else posted a similar matter not three days earlier! I did not mean to be redundant, but really appreciate your time taken to respond to my question. I will look into resizing my images (Assuming there must be a way to "batch process" this) and hopefully this forum or Google will be able to assist! Cross fingers please

I do have Nero, and will look at that option.

Would it be correct to assume the best economic value for me (as I am not selling these slideshows) will be to put the slideshow on a DVD disk? In this case, figuring not every cowboy around here will have much use for a flash drive; some of our older generation cowboys may not even know what the heck one is much less how use one!

Is a flash drive better in other instances though?

Thank you!!

[BrianA61]

Photodex Proshow Producer v6 is IT. I've created several slideshow DVD's in the past using other software including Adobe Premiere and Encore. That was very cumbersome. Since then, I have reproduced some of my old slideshows using Proshow and found it much easier to work with. The best advice I can give you is shoot in RAW, do whatever PP is needed and then export as JPG files for your slideshow. RAW files capture all of the detail and has a much wider range to do post processing. I use LR 5 and it has a plug in that automatically exports directly to Proshow Producer and converts processed RAW files to JPG on the fly. Very streamlined and relatively easy to use once you get the hang of it. Here are a couple of slideshows I reworked from an RV trip my wife and I took back in 2009.

http://s295.photobucket.com/user/fis...9bb75.mp4.html

http://s295.photobucket.com/user/fis...abdc4.mp4.html

[Geoff F]

Isn't the Producer version of Proshow fairly expensive, Brian. Or is that a different version?

Even the Gold version, which I use, is quite a bit more than the free alternative software options.

But I certainly agree with what you say about quality and easy of use from Proshow. I tried several trial versions of the alternatives before purchase, but I just couldn't get on with any of them.

[BrianA61]

Yes, producer is more expensive than the Gold version, but, it does have more features that I find rather handy. I briefly tried the Gold version but it was an older version a couple of years ago and found it "OK" but not as easy as what I was using at the time. I started out using a program called Imaginate and it was a really powerful program and super easy to use. However, the company went out of business and there was never any improvements so I switched to Proshow. Once you figure out the controls, Proshow is easy and has a lot of powerful features that I used to have to use 3 or 4 other programs to get the same result.

[Lin Evans]

I have found PicturesToExe to be the finest tool for presentation slideshows that I have used. I teach presentation slideshow and animation creation and think that the tools should be both powerful and easy to use. With PicturesToExe I get both. It's possible for a beginner to make beautiful shows with pan, zoom, rotate and unlimited transition effects and when the need arises and one's skills have developed then it's possible to do things with this software not possible with other presentation slideshow products. An example - recently for fun I created a rotating icosahedron (a twenty sided figure) with three thousand six hundred and twenty separate video displays on the faces of this creation running simultaneously. I could not do that with Proshow Presenter, Proshow Gold, Wings Platinum, m.Objects, or any of my many other extremely powerful software including Adobe AfterEffects. Obviously, this is far beyond what people normally do with presentation slideshow products, but the power is there if the need arises.

The number of images is limited only by the resources on your computer but normal presentation shows do not last more than about 10 minutes or the audience gets bored. I try to limit my photos and videos in my shows to under 100 but there really is no practical limit as long as the show doesn't exceed the 32 bit software limitation.

Careful selection of audio for backgrounds helps and this software allows multiple sound tracks (virtually unlimited) and has complete ability to synchronize sound to images and complete wave envelope control. You can control volume, sound on, sound off, etc., very easily.

Absolutely resize your images. There is no advantage at all to using 36 megapixel images when the screen resolution of your audience will likely not be greater than 2560x1600 and most probabliy not more than 1920x1080. The only time the display resolution needs to be larger than the screen resolution is if you are doing a deep zoom into detail on a slide. In such a case limit the size of other slides and only use larger resolution for the slide or slides you intend to zoom in on.

There are a number of ways to distribute your shows. DVD is low resolution. In such a case there is generally no need to even use 1024x768 resolution because the files will automatically be resized to either PAL or NTSC size depending on the country where you live. In Canada they will become NTSC resolution. You could burn BluRay but it's slow and expensive. You could also post your shows on a website in zipped Windows executable or Native MacIntosh executable format (PTE does both Window and MacIntosh output) or you could create an mp4.h264 HD video of your work and upload it to YouTube or Vimeo. You could even distribute it on flash drives as mp4 h.264 high resolution videos for those clients who have large screen home TV's with a USB port.

You can see some of my demo shows on YouTube - just look for my pseudonym "Icejasper" channel. You can download a free trial version of PTE (PicturesToExe) from http://www.wnsoft.com if you wish to try it. See numerous shows done with PTE at http://www.slideshowclub.com as well.

Best regards,

Lin

1. What type of slideshow software do others utilize? Do others make a slideshow with MANY images? From the tutorials I can find on the internet it sounds like photographers put maybe 10 images on a disk?? That can't be can it?
2. Those who do create slideshows, what steps do you take to create a quality product?
3. Have you found there to be limitations as to how many images you can use? (Of course disk space is the ultimate limitation; however, at this point the software program doesn't even know where I'm saving to)
4. Should I be resizing my images from my D800 before I even begin? These files are huge!
5. Is a DVD disk my best option for putting the slideshow on? Are there other options?