Customer Reviews

ProShow Gold

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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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?

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.

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.

I downloaded the free trial version of ProSho Gold version 2.0 and thought it worked great. Then I read the reviews and saw where there were reports of bugs and freezes. I tried the program again and all seemed fine. I thought maybe I wasn't running the same operating system (I am running Win XP) or the others weren't meeting the computer requirements.

However, now that I have purchased the program and am using the more advanced features (zooming, and enlarging etc.) I am having all kinds of problems with freezing. I agree with the person that said if they can get the bugs out it would be a dynamite program! You should probably wait awhile as was suggested in another review.

I am writing the company to send this review and the other two that had problems in the hopes of getting things running right.

I am going to try another plain slide show. Hope it is only the fancy stuff causing the problems.

Excellent program for creating photo presentations. Earlier versions may have been buggy, but it appears that the major kinks have been worked out (though a few small things here and there could be improved).

Program outputs your presentation on to a CD for computer viewing, DVD or VCD for viewing on television or uploads it to the Proshow website.

The program is straight forward enough for a novice to get started and I was impressed at the level of sophistication that you could drive your presentation to (if you so desire). I've been looking for sometime for this type of program and so far -- I'm impressed and can recommend it.

This software seemed to be working great, until I tried to save the program to a disc. It then locked up several times and when I tried to reopen the slideshow, it wouldn't open it, it would just freeze up and not respond. The features to create the slideshow were wonderful, the reshuffle feature made it so easy to drop photos in and then randomize them. I also liked that you could see where in the music each picture would fall. The preview of the show was great, however now I cannot even view that. I spent several hours, loading pictures and music, formating them so they were just perfectly placed and saved the file. Now I have nothing to show for all those hours of work. Somehow the software needs to be improved.

I put together a lot of rather large ProShow Gold programs (150 or more 2.4 MB TIFF slides plus music files that exceed 10 MB) and had many of the problems mentioned by others here. I found out that ProShow Gold - at least up to Version 2.6 - will not run on Intel boards with Hyperthreading unless one of the CPU cycles is turned off. I have brought this to the attention of Photodex since they had been unaware of the problem and I hope this will be fixed in their next version. Dual processor boards are now coming on the market and I don't think ProShow will work on these, either, because of the same reason.

Fortunately, assuming you are using Windows XP or XP Pro, The solution is fairly simple. Open ProShow Gold and then open the Windows Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del) and click on the Processes tab. Mouse down to Proshow.exe and do a right click on it and then click on Set Affinity. CPU 0 and CPU 1 will be checked. Uncheck one of them (it doesn't make any difference which) and exit Task Manager. ProShow will now work just fine.

Unfortunately, this has to be done each time you use ProShow. There is a way to patch the program so that it always uses just one CPU cycle, but I don't think a review here is the appropriate venue. If you contact me off-line I can tell you how it is done. It is not hard and anyone can do it.

Bugs, bugs, bugs. I'm running XP home, Celeron 1.8GHz, 256MB RAM.

This is a gorgeous program that purports to do everything I want it to. If only it didn't crash every time I try to create an autorun windows CD, or a video CD, it would be great.

For $70, I expect them to at least make a pretense of getting out the bugs.

Buyer beware.

I purchased this product when it was version 1.32 but now since it has gone to verison 2.0 have had nothing but grief. This would be acceptable for sometimes getting software up to par is very tedius.. but when support is no longer available or they don't answer your emails then I would say beware of this company.. sqave your money.

I obtained this software after a thorough search of slideshow maker software features. This software is extremely flexible in output format (DVD, VCD etc.) and lets you use your own music files rather than a subscription service. The more I use this program, the more I love it. In fact, I am buying this for others to replace their existing slide show software since they LOVED mine. Also, I agree with the previous comment that this software does not try to be a photo organizer. I LIKE the way my photos are currently organized and this software doesn't require the photos to be reorganized in a different format. My 11-year old son is actually using this format and producing some fine slideshows- it is that easy.