The Official Photodex Guide to ProShow (Paperback)

by James Karney (Author), Mike Fulton (Photographer), Cody Clinton (Photographer)
Key Phrases: slide options, keyframe timeline, chroma key, The Official Photodex Guide, Precision Preview, Adjustments Effects (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
With the amazing, easy-to-use features of ProShow, you can create polished multimedia productions that sizzle! Presentations are a growing part of everyday life, from the conference room to the living room, and today’s viewers want presentations that pop. "The Official Photodex® Guide to ProShow®" is the solution. A comprehensive guide to ProShow for everyone from graphics and photography professionals, to educators and business professionals, and even novice home users, this book provides step-by-step, how-to-do-it examples with ample screenshots for effective instruction. You’ll learn how to create stunning multimedia productions that can be shared using everything from optical media, to iPods, to streaming Web content, and more. Perfect your multimedia presentation skills as you cover the basics of design, the fundamentals of ProShow production techniques, and advanced tools to achieve professional results. Interviews with award-winning producers provide insight and ideas along with real-world examples and how-to tips from their work.

About the Author
James Karney has over 30 years experience as an award-winning professional photographer and teacher. He started as a wedding apprentice in high school and has worked as a photojournalist, medical photographer, studio photographer, and served four years as a US Marine Corps photographer. He developed and taught the 18-month photography certificate program at South Georgia Tech. He is an accomplished computer journalist, whose work has appeared in PC Magazine, Windows Magazine, Computer Shopper, and Internet World. His books include The Official Photodex Guide to ProShow, Mastering Digital Wedding Photography (Named a Book of the Year by Shutterbug Magazine), the Golden-Lee bestseller Upgrade and Maintain Your PC, The Power of CorelDRAW, and the Microsoft Press Training Kit for A+ Certification. He is a graduate of the US Navy Photographic School, and holds a bachelors degree in Communications from Excelsior College as well as a master of science in Computer Technology from Nova Southeastern University.

Cody Clinton developed his skills photographing friends and co-workers at local sporting events, family reunions, and his true passion,weddings. He uses his natural energy and artistic personal style to create special moments for brides, grooms, and their family and friends.

Product Details

• Paperback: 358 pages
• Publisher: Course Technology PTR; 1 edition (May 23, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1598634089
• ISBN-13: 978-1598634082
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #310,749 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A mess of a book, August 1, 2008

By	William Lane "Southwest photo printer" (Las Vegas, NV United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have used ProShow Gold for years and love it. I have produced dozens of slide shows for travel and photo clubs and have produced DVDs for sale with the program. This book is a total mess, just not useful. So many problems, where to begin. Each should be corrected in a totally revised version.
1. The book is a giant sales pitch for the much more expensive Producer version of the program. One cannot get past chapter 5 without Producer. The book should have been divided into sections with the beginning explaining common features of ProShow Gold and Producer. The end of the book could discuss features unique to Producer.
2. The CD files that come with the book are very frustrating to get to play with Windows Vista. There is no explanation of how to get them to play.
3. Many of the features of Gold are not mentioned. This book is of little help to a beginner. Many of the check boxes, choices and methods to produce slide shows are ignored or not explained in enough detail.
4. The book totally ignores how to deal with big digital photo files and small amount of computer RAM. Many will overload their computers unless they first convert photos to lower resolution. A resolution of say 1000 to 1500 pixels across is all that is needed. I convert my photos first before construction big slide shows.
5. The book ignores techniques for using adjacent copies of slides to produce creative motion effects. Again, it is a sale pitch for the more expensive Producer version without showing how to do great shows with the less expensive Gold version.
6. The book goes into great detail of moving boxes with the Producer version, showing how to create mind numbing multiple boxes, motion, zooms within boxes and frames and moving text all on one screen. This is total mental overload for anyone looking at such a slide show. If Hollywood thought this to be artistic, they would have incorporated moving boxes, text, zooms and more into their movies. These techniques which are covered in several chapters just lead to confusing, frustrating, non-artistic messes of slide shows.
7. The book ignores various techniques to fill a horizontal screen with vertical images. The author could have given some good tips.
8. As others have indicated, the book is full of errors, typos and mistakes. The book should have been tested by novices to the program before publication. Get ten people from the street and let them learn from the book and try to create a slide show. Total confusion and frustration will be the result.
I wanted to see what features Producer has that Gold does not. The book did not do a good job of listing them. I came away definitely convinced that the cheaper Gold version is a great program and that the expensive Producer is not needed by 95% of users. I very much recommend buying ProShow Gold but not this book.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One word describes this book: awesome!, June 19, 2008

By	Jerry Saperstein (Evanston, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

It's rare in the technical "how-to" genre to find a book as well done as this one. It truly is awesome.

Photodex ProShow has long been one of the staples for those who produce or wanted to produce high-class slide shows. Over the years, the product, along with everything else it seems, tended more and more toward becoming a multimedia platform. A few years back, this trend reached fruition in the immensely powerful ProShow Producer.

The problem was that both programs had more power than was adequately explained in the supplied help files. Don't get me wrong: Photodex provided great help files (as well as great support). It's just that programs, particularly ProShow Producer are capable of so much.

At last to the rescue comes James Karney with this masterpiece of a "how-to" book.

Every aspect of using ProShow Gold and ProShow Producer is explained through text and examples on the supplied CD. Karney explains his goal on the first page of the introduction: ProShow is "easy to use", but hard to master. "The novice can create a slide show in a minutes, but crafting a real multimedia production requires learning how to use special effects, keyframes, and output formats." Karney covers all these subjects and far more in 13 chapters and 340 pages.

As someone in the industry who must read dozens of technical books of the "how-to" variety, I know that most of the titles are just adequate and many are awful. It is truly refreshing to encounter someone like Karney who not only truly mastered his subject instead of just recycling the help file, but can also write. This is his 24th book.

Karney begins with the basics and then builds step-by-step into more elaborate productions using more and more of ProShow's features. One of the features, keyframing, is extremely versatile and Karney cleverly comes back to it repeatedly as he shows how increasingly sophisticated use of keyframing enables you to create more sophisticated productions.

If you own PhoShow Gold or Producer, you need this book to get the most out of either program. If you don't own them, but need a dependable, incredibly powerful multimedia creation engine, then you need to check ProShow out - trial copies are included on the book's CD and are, of course, downloadable from the publisher's site. Either way, you definitely need this book to learn how to get everything you can out of ProShow.

Simply put, this book is a gem and beautifully complements a powerful program.

Jerry

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Guide to ProShow book, June 10, 2008

By	S. Ashbrook (Largo, FL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've been using Proshow Gold and Producer for some time now and I found this book to be excellent for both beginners and those more advanced. Not only do you learn how to use the tools but you get good ideas on the artistic way to use these tools by seeing the various shows that are on the included CD. An experienced Gold user said "The deeper I get into Pro Show Gold and the book I find significant advantages to Producer."