PictureShow 4
Boxshot, Screenshots:
Organise mode
Theme mode:
DVD menu,
Transitions,
Audio & Effect and
Burn mode
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Details at a glance
Photo and video slideshow software for CDs
PC only, Win 98+
We clicked with
Simple interface, amount of control available over slideshows, speed of use
Shots in the dark
Rendering for CD/DVD burning takes some time, not available for Mac
Links
More Ulead information
www.ulead.com
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As cameras get easier to use and memory cards get cheaper, more and more people can get involved in photography. In the past, film photography was relatively expensive and complex, but now you can just pick up a digital camera and go. Where you used to be severely limited by the amount of film you had, it's now easy to take hundreds of photos before you realise it - and it's just as easy to forget them. In film you really have to print your photos to see them but with digital there's no obligation to print. And so they sit there, lost, on a computer.
This is unfortunate as it is really easy to share your digital photos (and film pictures if you scan them!). You can do three main things with your photos on computer: you can print them and have a physical copy; you can share them online; or you can turn them into slideshows and share them on CD or DVD. Ulead PictureShow 4 is a piece of software designed to help you with the latter.
Interface
The PictureShow box proudly proclaims that this software is the “Easy way to creating photo slideshows”. It is broadly split up into the stages of the process (Organise, Theme and Burn) which stops button clutter from complicating things and clearly shows that there are three steps. This simplicity will help users knock up a slideshow in minutes without having to refer to the manual first. Even within the sections the amount of buttons are kept to a minimum.
The design of the interface is quite pleasing on the eye with a very modern look - blue gradients and clear text all over. The only issue I have with the interface is that it cannot be resized. The box it warns you need a 1024x768 resolution or higher and if you haven't got this, ignore it at your peril! The program fills the screen at 1024x768 and sits windowed above that. This isn't that bad, but if you haven't got this resolution then the program is unusable - refusing to run until it gets the resolution it wants.
Finally, as the program is designed for working with CDs and DVDs there is a very handy feature at the bottom of the screen. It has a slider which tells you how much of the CD or DVD you have filled up with photos and stops that very annoying and embarrassing moment where you waste a CD because you have accidentally over-filled it. This slider is present on all three stages.
1. Organising
This is the part of the program you'll probably spend most time in, and it is very easy to get the hang of. It lets you choose what photos or videos you want and their order, and it can handle copying images off your camera. Photos are contained in a series of slideshows, which act like a scene in a DVD. You can add an unlimited number of photos to each slideshow and as well as blank scenes that you can use as title screens.
Inside the Organize section you can edit your photos, using the same “ExpressFix” system that Ulead's PhotoImpact 11 added. This is quite an advanced system allowing you to quickly adjust exposure, colour, saturation and focus on the photos, and is a welcome addition to the program.
The “Decorate” function allows you to add text to your photos in any font you have installed on your computer. Decorate also allows you to add “Props” to your photo, of which there are about 1000 including a rubber duck and snowmen. This is a very gimmicky feature but it might find some use on title frames.
The program can't do anything about the old problem of putting landscape and portrait-orientated photos together in a landscape video, but thankfully it doesn't automatically try to fix it. Instead all vertical photos are highlighted with a red X letting you know immediately that it won't fit correctly. It can then be deleted, or if you double click it will get letterboxed with two big black borders.
2. Theme
Here is where things get slightly more complicated, as Theme handles the creation of DVD menus and the Slideshow settings. If you are creating the slideshow just for computer or for web you can jump to the “Slideshow” tab and I'll do the same. You can set the Photo Duration per slideshow (they can all be different for each), add .mp3 or .wav audio files to play in the background and add photo functions. These functions allow you to add a photo frame, a transition effect (e.g. Wipe) and a Pan/Zoom (e.g. a slight zoom in while the photo is displayed). As you would expect the effects range from the useful to the ludicrous. For those after a bit more control the “Audio and Effects” button allows you to change these settings per photo. Finally you can export the slideshow as an .avi or an .mpeg. This is slightly limited, in this age where everyone seems to have a website it would have been nice to have more options like exporting to Flash.
If you are intending to make a CD or DVD out of the slideshow then you will need to create menus to allow them to be played back, and this is where the “Themes” are used. By applying a theme the menu is automatically created with each slideshow getting a button so you can select it with a remote control. The button image is either the first image in the slideshow or one you have specifically selected in Organise. Again, the scenes vary in usefulness but it's important to note they are quite customisable. The background image can be changed on all of them and it is only really the button design that the theme brings in. However this flexibility isn't very obvious in the theme selector.
Whether you are doing the menu or the slideshow, there is a preview video player right next to it on the screen which updates straight away. This allows you to quickly play around with all the settings and fine-tune things without the long previewing stage that other programs have.
3. Burn
You only need this last stage if you are putting the slideshow onto a CD or DVD as it handles the burning process. There are very few options available, just put your CD in and press start. It does take a fair while to run as it has to prepare the slideshows and render all the transition and pan/zoom effects, so if you have a large amount of photos and a slow computer it is probably best that you limit these. The burning process itself is pretty quick but this is more dependent on the speed of your computer and CD-ROM drive.
The program keeps all the burning process in-house without needing an external program like Nero, which saves a lot of hassle. If you need to create copies of the CD, there's a program called Copy.Now in the bundle that lets you re-burn CDs without having to go through the slideshow render process. If you have two CD drives then you can just copy from one to another but if not you can save a “disc image” and then copy that.
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On first impressions PictureShow 4 may look a bit simple and a one-trick pony but this is quite an unfair label. The interface keeps things clear so that you can put together a slideshow in minutes yet it still has more advanced slideshow and editing options if you need them and it includes a lot of themes and options to keep things different every time. However, the program is limited to just producing movies or CDs and if you don't put your photos into slideshows then the program doesn't offer anything more. Get a 15 day trial here
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