Bring out the Best from Your Pictures

Last week I came back from a fabulous vacation, where I took hundreds of beautiful pictures, which I immediately shared with my friends. I was especially proud of the artistic side of some of them so, along with the preview, I opened iTunes for suiting music. The first picture was great. I started telling its story, where I was, what I was doing, making a subtle introduction for the next one, when the music suddenly stopped.

So, I had to go to iTunes, see what happened, make sure that I am settled with the appropriate music for the next hour or so, and optimistically got back to my photos. And everything went great... until I remembered that I had made a different folder for each day, so you can imagine the amount of time I spent going back and forth through folders, especially if someone wanted to see again a specific picture. It was a pretty exhausting experience, and the worst part was that after all the effort, my pictures seemed boring and insignificant.

Sounds familiar? Since I promised myself I would not go through the same torture ever again, I started looking for an application that might ease my pain. That is how I found PhotoPresenter. The program has recently been acquired by Boinx Software in order to complete their software suite, basically designed for professional photographers, but the interface is simple enough to provide assistance even to the most inexperienced user.

The Looks

The main window is very efficiently organized in two different areas. On the left side, you can see your sources area, which comprises your libraries and allows you to create new groups or simply manage the existing ones, while on the right side, you can see the content of each group. At the bottom of the second area, you may find a status bar that allows you to adjust the size of the picture's thumbnails. This way you can have easy access to any picture from your slideshow in a matter of seconds. In case you have a large library, you can also use the basic search function that can be found above the sources area. Once you added your sources, all you have to do is choose a type of slideshows, standard or animated, and you are set to go.

The Works

Although the standard slideshow's features are quite basic, they definitely do the trick. Once you press the button placed on the top of the window, a "preference panel" is displayed and you get to choose which type of transition should be used for your pictures. Also, you can adjust the speed, choose which music you would like to listen to, fit the slideshow to the music or choose to repeat it.

Both the slideshow and the music playlist can be automatically shuffled, so you might get a new perspective every time you run it. If you want to display the name of the picture, you must select the "Show titles" checkbox and it will appear in the top left corner. If you want to customize the title, you must go to the Slideshow Inspector through the Window menu, or press the button situated on the upper right corner. This panel will allow you to set the title you desire.

Set how long a tile should linger on your desktop, press play and enjoy your amazing images. Just like that. You also have keyboard shortcuts in case you want to go back or forth, basically the right and left arrows and spacebar for play and stop, but you can also use the Apple remote control. And if you want to see your entire slideshow without leaving the full screen mode, just press the command button.

The animated slideshow has about the same rules. The difference is set by the style panel that contains animated templates that can be applied to your own pictures. You should play a little with them to see how each looks. For example, my favorite is Carousel but if you need something a bit more sophisticated, then the Night City style might do the trick.

The best part is that once you have created a slideshow, you can send it to Quicktime, iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, iWeb, iDVD, make it your screensaver or just share it with your friends through your email, in a matter of minutes. But this is not all. The Preference panel of the application provides the surprise, which is the fact that you can use multiple displays to play your slideshow.

The Good

Besides the fact that PhotoPresenter is very efficient, allowing you to create a presentation in a matter of minutes, it also gives certain elegance to your pictures. If you want to bring out the best from your images, this application could help you a lot.

The Bad

Unfortunately, there are very few animated templates provided and, although some of them are quite spectacular, I believe there should be more.

The Truth

PhotoPresenter is definitely not the first software created to provide this kind of support, and I am sure it will not be the last. The fact is that the combination of features makes it quite a unique product. All in all, it is a bit expensive ($19.95), but if you are a passionate photographer, you could find this application useful.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: