Web slideshow software for photographers...SlideShowPro

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Web slideshow software for photographers...SlideShowPro

Postby Tarafrost » Wed Jul 07, 2010 2:18 pm

I've always thought that PSP is a bit of overkill (to put it mildly) for posting simple photo slideshows on the web, when you are primarily trying to emphasize the photography rather than your skills in selecting the latest transitions/layer effects, etc.

Finally found a tool that can create pretty decent web slideshows, is inexpensive, is easy to use and a lot less buggy than PSP. It installed easily on my web hosting provider, though the company offers their own hosting as well. They even provide a neat utility that will determine if your hosting provider has the right prerequisites installed for the tool.

The software is called SlideShowPro and their web site is here:

http://www.slideshowpro.net/

I got the Standalone version of SlideShowPro along with the Director server-side stuff. Pretty inexpensive for what it
does. Took a little while to tweak the user interface for the slideshow, but now it looks pretty good on the latest
slideshow I created and posted today.

I've posted a new slideshow with almost 90 photos I took at the recent offroad riding, SCORRA Fun Day @ RJs! You can view this new slideshow here:

SCORRA Fun Day @ RJs

Since I typically want just a simple layout with Ken Burns Pan/Zoom effects and some per-photo captions, it's a really convenient tool to use, especially since PSP does not run under Ubuntu Linux (Grrrrr!). You configure everything using a browser based interface and/or html, including uploading the photos and audio. I just created a standard set of parameters for tarafrost.com for most of the UI stuff, since it will all be about the same for all my typical photography shows.

It's neat because it supports a full screen mode, and it will automagically resize the images to suit. Of course, I
still only post downrezzed jpgs....not full size, but that is a personal decision.

Some of the benefits over PSP:

1) Way cheaper
2) Less bugs, fewer crashes
3) Simpler tool, shorter learning curve
4) Streams video so it starts faster. No having to load 50MB files over the net.
5) Nice, configurable toolbar
6) Support for galleries if you want
7) Dynamic slideshow generation...just upload more pics to an album and they appear by magic
8) Web-based so you can use it from Linux or anywhere on the net
9) Automatic resizing of images
10) Image quality/resizing seems to be quite a bit better than PSP
11) Streaming of slideshow video (faster startup)

They are releasing a "Mobile" HTML5 version (eg. no flash required) later this month for display on iPads and the like....which I'm really looking forward to and which factored into my decision to go this route for web-based slideshows.

Cons:

1) Not as much flexibility as PSP (which can be a good thing if it's your photos you want to emphasize).
2) Only for web output....no DVD/BluRay, etc.
3) Requires a bit of HTML expertise to get working, but not that much
4) Can take a while to figure out all the parameters to customize your UI to your tastes, but that is a one-time thing

Anyway....it won't preclude me from using PSP for more complex, non-web based shows....but for my web photography stuff.....I'm gonna be using SlideShowPro for the forseeable future.

Figured I would pass this find on.....other photographers might find it useful as well.
....Andrzej (aka: the curmudgeon)

Tarafrost Photography: Specializing in Wild-Life
http://www.tarafrost.com

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Re: Web slideshow software for photographers...SlideShowPro

Postby ginger » Thu Jul 08, 2010 2:52 am

Hi,

I've used SlideshowPro and I love it, especially for web shows. I also used the standalone version. The quality of these Flash generated shows is so much better than Producer. I still don't understand why Producer's Flash output is so poor.

However, there's no feature to sync music to a show; at least there wasn't the last time I looked, and nowhere near the feature list of Producer or even Gold (though a lot can be done with SSP and Flash). The ability to sync music to a show was what got me looking for other options and I ended up with Producer, and I'm very happy I found it. I will still use SlideshowPro for anything where the main purpose is to be displayed on the web. I like the thumbnail options and navigation buttons for viewing a gallery, but mostly I like the high quality Flash output for web use.

ginger

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