ProShow Gold

by Photodex Corporation

Product Features

• Make advanced slide shows for your TV and PC, executables, VCDs, screen savers and more.

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00008X55X
• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 20, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,225 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Create slide shows for any occasion! Use ProShow to easily create stunning slide shows for friends, family, business, or just for fun! Just select your photos and drop them in the show. Add a custom sound track or pick from over 170 stunning transition effects to add that final touch.

Take your photos further! ProShow gives you more output options than any other slide show software. Create video CDs that play back on your TV. Generate MPEG video files for PC viewing. Build screen savers for yourself or others. Make self-contained executable slide shows (EXEs), perfect for e-mailing or poAsting online. Write PC autorun CDs that automatically play when inserted into a PC. ProShow does it all!

About.com Graphics Software

ProShow has more to offer than similar products I've tried to date...

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 79 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Slide Show Program, July 20, 2003

By 

C. Wagner "just one more gadget" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: ProShow Gold (CD-ROM)

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I tried several photo slide show programs, and this is the first one that works really well. Unlike other photo-managing software, ProShow does not try to be *both* a photo organizer and a slide show producer. It just does shows (slide, video, or screensaver). It helps to have all the photos for a show in one folder, but that's easy enough to do with Windows Explorer or one of the photo organizing programs, such as Picasa or CompuPic. For music (optional), I suggest collecting your MP3 files in a single Music folder.

I bought ProShow Gold because I want to be able to put multiple shows on one CD, which Gold allows.

I put together a slide show of 100 photos for my son, *with music*, and it was a snap. I told ProShow to randomize transitions, which means it always uses a different, fancy way of transitioning from one photo to the next. And you can choose any amount of seconds for photo display.

ProShow makes it easy to see, and control, which music will play with which photos. In addition to music, you can do sound effects. ProShow allows attachment of either MP3 or WAV sound files.

The resulting CD is a no-nonsense, enjoyable show without the advertising that Photodex's older CompuPic Pro put at the beginning of the slideshow. (ProShow offered to optionally show some sort of information before the show, but I suspected that it was an ad and squelched it.)

Some minor cons:
- FOR SOME PEOPLE, THIS MIGHT BE A MAJOR PROBLEM: ProShow does not work with the Adaptec ASPI manager, so you might need to select "Update ASPI", an option provided when you install ProShow. But after ProShow substitutes its own ASPI manager, CD-ripping programs such as CDEX and RealOne might no longer work with your CD drive. My regular CD burner, however, still works.
- Although ProShow allows captions, they must be typed in. Why doesn't ProShow use the captions that PhotoShop lets you store right in the photo file?

44 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The only slide show program worth using, April 3, 2003

By 

Mikel Holmes (Kansas City, MO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ProShow Gold (CD-ROM)

I needed to make a slide show for my father's retirement party, and wanted to play them on a television. I looked at 7 different programs, and proshow was easier than all of them, including Easy slide show. I think the shows look better than any of the programs I tried too. It did exactly what I wanted, and it was effortless. I made a slide show with different transitions, there has to be at least 100 of them, and added some of my father's favorite songs, and made the show. It literally took me about 10 minutes to make the initial show, and then I spent some time getting it just right. This is perfect for anyone wanting to make a slide show, regardless of the level of expertise, trust me, I am not an expert. I did have some trouble figuring out how to add captions to the show, but one call to their support (a LIVE person answered my call on the 2nd ring!!!) and they walked me right through it. It was really easy after the showed me how. I would recommend this program to anyone.

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars NOT PROFESSIONAL GRADE YET, December 31, 2004

By 

Kim (Quincy, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ProShow Gold (CD-ROM)

I have owned and used this software to make a number of slide shows over the last year and a half. In that time it is indeed true many improvments have been made. My first use was with version 1.2 and I am now using version 2.0 build 1589 or 2.1589. There have been so many glitches it seems that new builds or versions arrrive, at times, every few weeks. This should be encouraging as it demonstrates a commitment to continuously fix and improve the software. If you own the software all these updates are free and easily downloaded from the Photodex website.

I agree with some of the other reviews in that it is exceptionally easy to produce basic slide shows. However, use of some of the more advanced features needs work. I am specifically not pleased with the functionality of captions and sounds being attached to indivudual slides. In version 1.XX the captions were "attached" to a slide such that using two duplicate slides back to back allowed you to fade in a title or caption over a specified length of time as you transitioned to the second slde with the caption attached. This capability was lost in 2.0. An option was soon added allowing a caption to float above the transition [remain on screen] between slides allowing this same effect to be simulated but the result is not as smooth. On the flip side allowing captions to function separately from an indivudual slde has allowed for a host of really cool caption effects. The current caption fade in/out option would be greatly improved if the timing of the fade could be controlled. Additionally, some of the other effects such as zoom in/out and pan effects are not smooth. These glitches are even evident in some of the slide shows I have viewed on the Photodex website.

The good news is Photodex seems upfront in that they publish what was fixed in each version [build #] and it is evident they are continuously improving the software. Do I consider this a profession grade product? Not yet. Am I going to continue to use and upgrade this software? You bet. By the time Photodex releases 3.0 or perhaps 4.0 they should have the best slide show software on the planet. It is worth the money.