14 DAY TRIAL // Watching photos in an image editor is what most people do and the files are generally exchanged with no additional alteration. But if you have a special batch you want to make stand out from the crowd, creating a slideshow out of it is most of the times the way to go, as it is the digital replacement of a physical photo album.
Plus, you get to customize the transitions between the images the way you want it, as well as personalize them according to the importance of the next image. The truth is that a well done slideshow can express more than watching single pictures, and it can be a means to building up suspense for the photo of the grand finale.
AlbumMe is a $39.95 easy solution to create slideshows and wrap them up in different file formats: HTML, SWF, executable, create a screensaver and install it directly on the computer or send the slideshow in Flash format over email. For testing purposes, the application comes with a 30-day limit and a watermark on the final result – enough to evaluate the software and decide if it covers your needs.
The interface is as simple as possible, with no bells and whistles (except for the transition effects and the background templates) to hinder your work. Main Menu window does not assault the user with anything else but a list of default folders, to which you can add your own or rename to your liking, which contain the albums with your photos.
AlbumMe does not intrude with photo search engines or any other type of pop up boxes that most times are quite nagging, instead offers the essential options to create your album and save it in the desired folder under whatever name you want. Creating an album is an indispensable operation in order to go on with the project of making the slideshow.
Once an album is created, the app does not halt the process of adding new images to the gallery or remove existent ones. AlbumMe provides a 4-step procedure to publishing the final result and tweaking all the transitions, as well as decorate the background of the images and adjust the pictures themselves.
Photo is the first step of the publishing process and it mainly allows you to add new elements, remove old ones, and change their order. But there are also some adjusting options for the image, such as changing the contrast and brightness. Additionally, you can crop the image to a custom rate or choose one of the presets available: 4:3, 3:4 or 1:1.
Further options include the possibility to add one of the four photo effects present, grayscale, inverted colors, sculpture and sculpture2 (the last two are very similar to emboss effect). And to complete the set of features of the first step, AlbumMe also lets you rotate or flip the picture both horizontally and vertically. You can tinker with all these at will without applying any change, and thus benefit from a preview, because the program provides a restore button to revert all modifications.
Template section is where you get to stick a wallpaper over which the images are displayed. Unfortunately, the list of templates is quite short, and for $39.95, I expected a little more than 23 backgrounds. Some brief configuration is available in this section and consists in choosing a custom or preset dimensions for the template, enable/disable control buttons or show photo index (this is not implemented for all templates).
Here's also where you can make watching the slideshow view even more pleasant and add a soundtrack to the little movie of yours and enable music fade in and out. However, this is where AlbumMe will give you trouble, should you choose to include a WAV audio. The hard time will pop up when trying to publish the project to one of the supported formats because an access violation error will pop up and break your enthusiasm. With the other two audio formats supported, MP3 and WMA, there was absolutely no problem during our testing.
More visual bells and whistles can be added to the slideshow from Decorate panel, under the form of cliparts, which can be anything from the default items to SWF, BMP, JPG or PNG files on your computer. The app also makes available the possibility to add any or as many of the sounds present. You have to keep in mind that both cliparts and sound sections are split into categories totalizing a full set of 129 cliparts and 54 sounds.
The step for decorating the images is also where you decide on the transition effects of each image in the slideshow. There are 74 switch effects at your disposal, covering all sorts of impressions that have no name but provide a preview on a sample of the application. The software is flexible enough to let you customize each transition individually or make it easy on you and apply the same one for all pictures or a randomly chosen one at each image change.
One of the great things in AlbumMe is that it allows customizing the intro and the end of the project, just like in a real movie. You can add notes at the beginning and the end of the slideshow and customize the appearance effect (Fade up, Typewritter, Skew, Scroll up, Scroll Up All) and the text (in terms of font, size, color and formatting).
The last step of the project is publishing it as an SWF movie, HTML file or executable. There is also a Settings menu for making the last minute adjustments and choose the size, FPS, background color, as well as the loop style (auto loop or enable the “replay” button). At the end of all this work, it would be a shame not to be able to preview the entire project before saving it to a custom location, so AlbumMe lets you indulge in your effort.
If all the steps seem like too much work for you, you can skip from photo collecting straight to publishing. Also, at any point, you can save the project and resume your effort later.
AlbumMe makes for an extremely easy to use slideshow creator that provides some of the best results, regardless of the file format you choose. On the downside, we have the price that ruins the appetite upon publishing if you chose to include a WAV file. Adding a plethora of templates, cliparts and sounds would bring the application closer to its price.
The Good
Introductory and End credits are a new touch for this sort of software and make a great impression, especially when you have the possibility to personalize the writing.
There are plenty of publishing options that cover sending the project via email, installing it as a screensaver on your computer, as well as adapt it for the web (SWF and HTML formats).
The Bad
Adding a WAV file in the project messed up the publishing completely. Also, adding an avalanche of effects, picture frames, cliparts and sounds would make it more appealing.
The interface is not resizable and some users may see this as a great inconvenient. There are few text effects, especially in the case of the introduction and ending notes.
The Truth
You can save the project at any time and modify it in whatever way you want by moving back and forth between the steps, as well as skip some of the stages in order to head faster towards publishing.
All in all, AlbumMe makes for an easy to use slideshow creator with a mild (if any) learning curve, but it is a bit overpriced and there is still brushing up to be done in order to reach full maturity.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
