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Best Free Photo Slideshow Software
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In a Hurry?
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 Go straight to the Quick Selection Guide |
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Introduction
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Photo slideshow software allows you to create a slideshow of your favorite or memorable photos from your collection, and turn multiple images into a standard video file for playback on your PC or other media devices. Moreover, using a capable photo slideshow program, you can easily select animated transitions between images, insert colorful text to display on slides, and add lovely background music or your voice narration to a slideshow. With some of these special effects and attractive addons, you can actually bring your still photos to life in just a few minutes. If these have been what you're looking for, then check out one of these free applications reviewed here. You might find it pretty useful in creating an impressive multimedia slideshow of your photos for sharing with your friends and family. |
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Discussion
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The program comes with a wizard-driven interface, leading you step by step all the way—import and arrange your pictures on a film strip, add a title on the selected picture, narrate your story by clicking the Record button or add background music to a set of pictures, then save your story or slideshow. That's it. What's more? You can add panning and zooming effects to your pictures with various transition effects. Better still, you can even remove black borders by selectively cropping your pictures, and create music customizable with properties from the library of the program. In each step of preparing a project, you can save it in a proprietary wp3 file format for further editing or backup. When you're done with the project, you can save it with a profile supporting a video size from 320x240 pixels up to 1024x768 pixels for playback on your PC, or with other preset profiles for playback on mobile devices. The bit rate, aspect ratio and frame rate are also optimized for you based on the chosen profile. I find that creating compelling slideshows from digital images is most intuitive and enjoyable with this program, but on the flip side, it saves your video file in wmv format only and doesn't support burning videos to a DVD or other optical disks. Other than Photo Story, try also Windows Movie Maker 2.1 (for XP) which can also be used to create a slideshow of photos with the music background and transition effects, and save in wmv format although the program is mainly designed for making home movies. The latest version Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 (for Vista and 7), which is a module in Windows Live Essentials, can do the same with more advanced features such as high definition support. A slideshow saved in wmv format can then be burned into a DVD using Windows DVD Maker included in some versions of Windows. |
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Not only can you import photos and soundtracks with the program, you can also add to your project additional media types such as videos in avi or avs format, and presentation files in ppt or odp format. Useful tools are ready for you to pan, zoom or rotate photos with a variety of transition effects and motion backgrounds, add and edit borders and subtitles. It's also appealing to users that high definition videos up to 1080p is supported in project settings. You can save your project file in Dsg format for backup, or export your result into popular video formats including mp4, mpg, flv, avi, avs and more. Besides, you can author and burn a project file to a DVD for playback on a player or just save an iso file to your hard disk. While running the current version of this program, I encountered some issues such as the system exception error when a project was previewed in Media Player Classic, but when the project was exported to an mpg file, it played back smoothly on the same player. |
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What I like most about this program is its drag-and-drop feature. Not only can you drag and drop photos from your folder to a slideshow, you can also drag and drop transition effects between images with pan and zoom functions. This makes creating slideshows a lot easier. On top of that, you can record your narration or add your favorite background music with optional in/out fading and loop audio. A project can be saved in its proprietary format while a completed slideshow can be output to popular mpg format for playback with a video size up to a maximum of 720x576 pixels. Various audio and video options are available for adjustments by users as well. Sadly, adding text to slides, more output profiles and other advanced features, such as burning slideshows to a DVD disc, are only available to the commercial Pro version. |
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Other Free Photo Slideshow Software
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Several other free photo slideshow applications were not rated in this review. I am listing some of them here with brief descriptions and links to their sites for ease of reference.
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Related Products and Links
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You might want to check out these articles too: |
This product is available at Softpedia here with no WGA validation required.
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Editor
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This article is maintained by volunteer editor Jojoyee. |
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Tags
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best photo slideshow, best photo slideshow software, best photo to video, best image to video, best photo story, multimedia slideshow, best image slide show, best photo to dvd program, converter, photo movie creator. |
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Comments
thank you 4 your efforts
Microsoft doesn't not mention Photo Story being compatible with Windows 7. Several people who posted on a Microsoft blog confirm this.
Hi, I used Photostory on Windows 7 with no problems at all. Does anyone know if there are any free backgrounds for your photos to be inserted into in order to make a slideshow. Example a holiday theme background?
Thanks Jim Carter for the info. I tried it on Win7 and it worked for me.
ffDiaporama : http://ffdiaporama.tuxfamily.org/
Another suggestion.
PhotoFilmStrip : http://www.photofilmstrip.org/1-1-Home.html
Thanks for the site, Jojoyee - the recommendation for PhotoStory is worth its weight in gold. By the way, cnet also has a download that doesn't make you go through the Microsoft validation rigamarole.
I'm surprised you gave Socusoft a 7/10 rating. I'd give it about a 5, primarily because it claims to support pan and zoom but there is no apparent way to control it - the program just picks some random pan by itself. And although it has a zillion transitions, all but the crossfade are cheesy shape wipes from the 1980's. Something a little less dated, like page curls or swirls, would have been nice.
Do any of these or other slideshow products allow you to create a DVD that permits manual control of pictures? In other words I want each picture to remain on the screen until I hit the select button or something to advance to the next picture. Like a Powerpoint presentation.
need a freeware program that allows me to create a photo slide show and then doesnt make me jump thru hoops to transfer the show to a self-playable cd/dvd. (something like you get when you go to a Costco and put your photos on a cd, it comes with a player that cycles thru the photos).
Most of these descriptions dont say if burning for a DVD player is capable, and some dont support burning at all. I can burn ISOs using Roxio but I dont know what formats are readable by a DVD player. And if I dont have to use multiple sw apps to accomplish this, Im happier.
My intended recipient is my MIL, who is barely capable of turning on her pc, TV, or dvd player. (she has a sheet of paper outlining the steps to take and she uses this guide EVERY TIME because she still hasnt got the hang of it, even after 2 years.) If I can put photo slideshow on a cd/dvd and give it to her, all she should have to do is drop it in her dvd player and it ought to work, same thing for her pc.
Ive never created a slide show before, never needed to. Now I do, and it has to be able to be read using a DVD player as well as a pc.
Suggestions?
Photo Story is most instuitive and easy to use but unfortunately it doesn't support burning to DVD for playback on a DVD player, but as mentioned in this article, you can use Windows DVD Maker to do it.
As an alternative, DVD slideshow GUI can also be used to author and burn a project file to a DVD for playback on a player, exactly as what has mentioned in the article.
Hope this helps.
Does anyone happen to know if any of these free versions allow you to set the duration a slide shows to 0? I had a corrupt video file that i could not manage to fix for the life of me. (on top of being corrupt it was recorded on an ipod so the video played sideways) (movie maker crashes when preparing the dvd) anyway... I downloaded UMPlayer recently and found a cool little screenshot feature. I was able to rotate the video and skipped past a very buggy spot and got about 9,000 screenshots of the movie almost making it frame by frame. I have socusoft and i set the preferences to 0 for panning in and out, no transitions, and 0 for slide duration and 0 for transition duration. Yet it still pans in and out ans it still displays each slide for about 2 seconds before switching slides. I am basicly looking for something that will instantaniously go from slide to slide without any panning / zooming. Thanks
Can you take a look at foto2avi ? http://www.trustfm.net/divx/SoftwareFoto2Avi.php?b2=1
Thanks
It does not allow me to add text or title to the slides, better than XnView, but not the others :-(
In the process of trying a few slideshow producing apps...
How is Foto2avi when it comes to adding photos into the slideshow? One of the best things about Movie Maker is its ability to drag-n-drop images into the slideshow. Though Photo Story does not have this, it is better than Movie Maker when it comes to reordering images once they have been inserted into the slideshow.
Another thing you can do is make the slide show with visual effect and music. save in a wma format. Now open the wma in the windows movie maker, add you special sound effects, and credits plus title, and short music loop for the credits. It turns out great.
Glad you gave top billing to Photo Story, which I have been using for several years. I am surprised how few people know of it, but consider it one of the best offerings from Microsoft (the other being the new panoramic stitching program, Image Composite Editor). It has the best Ken Burns effect (pan and zoom) controls of any program, including most prosumer video editing programs. It's a bit laborious to use, because you can't jump non-linearly between different features, but otherwise it's a joy. A feature you did not mention is its ability to create time- and mood-specific music tracks from its own library modules. Has more variety than GarageBand at a basic level.
Many thanks for the feedback.
Irfanview does a great job creating a slideshow. The problem is that it can save the show only as an executable (.EXE, .SCR), so I doubt if gramma's email program will let it pass.
It might also be worth mentioning that Irfanview (more normally associated with graphics viewing) can make slideshows in the form of standalone executables.
It may not have all the capabilities of some of the other products mentioned here, of course!
That's true and welcome your good comment Oblivion. I've now mentioned both XnView and IrfanView in the "Other" section for reference.
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