Photo Slideshows: PhotoPresenter, FotoMagico and Online with JAlbum

My friend Don Kot from Geva and Nazareth College asked:

I was looking at the photos you took for our production of ELEGIES at Nazareth. They came out great (as usual!)……I was thinking of putting together a slideshow of sorts for our Dean, chairperson, and our tiny cast…..What do you suggest? Slide.com? or something like that?

Thanks! And Happy New Year!

….Don

Here’s what I suggested…

For a computer show:

If you have access to a Mac, this is great software for easy photo shows… Boinx Software’s PhotoPresenter.It’s only $20. It has tons of slideshow templates from clean and classy to tacky, so you’ll have plenty of options… Just choose wisely, young Jedi!
To get really fancy and do a pro-level show with everything timed and all, they make ‘Fotomagico‘, which I love and use for client work. You can output to iPod or DVD as well as play from the laptop. So I’m totally backed up in case of hardware failure… just play it from my iPhone or a DVD.

When I’m doing something very text-heavy and with photos, I uses Apple’s Keynote. Before I found PhotoPresenter, the easiest thing was just using Apple’s iPhoto. It’s free on all Macs. At the lower left of the iPhoto window is a ‘Play’ button to play any album as a slideshow… that creates a show that you can view immediately or tweak the settings on.
If you are on the PC side, I’m not really sure… I know lots of folks just use PowerPoint, which does the job, but isn’t very elegant or user-friendly for shows. Just stay away for cheesy transitions.

For a web-based show:

Slide.com is nice if the goal is a small Flash slideshow on the ‘Net. Very easy to learn. Lots of options. It’s grab your photos from Flickr and other sites. Watch out for cheesy templates.

But for doing bigger web slide shows, having more display options (and some shows with real class), I like JAlbum. It is designed for posting web galleries and shows. It’s donation-ware, and I liked it enough to pay. It’s available for Mac, Win, Linux, etc.

You download the software, then the ’skins’ which are the different ways to present the images (gallery of thumbnail images, or slideshows, etc).
Autoviewer  is a standard on the ‘Net and PostcardViewer  is fun. PhotoStack  would also be good for a big slideshow online. Just check out the online examples of the ‘most downloaded’ and the ‘highest rated’ skins and you’ll see the ones I mentioned.
You would have to invest a bit more time to learn the JAlbum settings (or find a geek actor to help). If you wanted to do lots of this sort of thing, learning JAlbum is pretty easy and really worthwhile. And once you get the settings where you like, you can save that as your default.

PS- for anyone using Apple’s Aperture, what I do most often is just use the Flash Album Exporter plug-in. They also have an iPhoto version, but sadly, the developer isn’t working on it any more, so someday it’ll break. Hopefully someone else will create a similar plug in. It’s great to create and export a Flash show right from Aperture.

Hope that helps everyone in creating shows… send me a link when you create something cool!
Cheers for your ‘09!Ken

Event Books

I love doing these event books because they really show off the whole range of photos from an event and let me add the creative detail photos and ‘quiet/behind the scenes moments’ that I love to shoot.

If you hover over the example above, there are some captions here and there. Also, clicking on it will take you to a web page where you can see all of the photos. The first shots are from the Highland Hospital Gala and later are from RIT. I create the books in Apple’s Aperture software.

I’m doing 7 books for RIT Alumni from the even I shoot tonight, so you know what I’ll be doing Monday.

And the price I charge right now is just $100 to create the book (which honestly takes 2-3 hours or more), and then $100 per printed, hardcover 8.5×11″ book. I’m sure in time those prices will have to go up, but I’m thrilled clients are getting into the idea more and more.

Podcasts

I posted the newest ApertureCast (lots of tips in this show!) at HuthPhoto.net and a friend asked about my setup.

I’m currently using Apple’s Garage Band and I really like it… very easy for adding graphics, built-in SFX, etc and linking for a very rich podcast that’s easy to do.

I use the Snowball Mic and I posted about that HERE.

Leo Laporte mentioned this as a new good mic for around $150.

Leave a comment with anything you’ve found to work well for your podcasts.

My Live Audioconference on Aperture & Lightroom…only $99

This is a great setup, you don’t even have to leave your office to attend!

You can listen in on an audio conference I’m teaching about getting started with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Apple’s Aperture. This kind of software is the first (and desperately needed) innovation since we got started with digital photography. Now you can be totally organized, totally backed up and edit and tweak your images at light speed.

I’ve never worked harder on a presentation, and you’ll walk away knowing the reasons you need this new type of software. You’ll also get all the facts so you can easily decide on buying Aperture or Lightroom. Finally, I’ve been all over the net and compiled the best resources on the topic, so you don’t have to spend days Googling and wading through junk.

And with Lightroom on a discount until late April, it’s the perfect time to learn about this software.

This class will save you money:
You’ll save the price of the conference by learning about it now, before the Adobe offer expires (Adobe is offering $100 offer, per LR package for a limited time). And you could really save $300 or more, since you’ll be choosing the right software for you, and then you’ll be ready to jump right in when you get it.

I’d love to have my clients attend and they’ve made the price fantastic. It’s even lower than when I teach for a client on-site… only $99 for as many folks as you want to listen in at your office!

Info and signup HERE

So please sign up and shoot me a message (or comment below) that you’ll be listening in!

Aperture & Lightroom

I’ve
been contracted by Eli Research to host an
audio conference on getting started using
digital photo management software
like
Apple’s Aperture and Adobe’s
Lightroom.
More info soon.

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Delivery Guy Rumble

(Or how I got my Podcast mic)

Whew, we just averted a major incident here in little Williamson. The FedX guy and the UPS guy both delivered to the house at the same time!
I shouted for them to remain calm and not start a gang turf war.
They were cool about my acting like an idiot and the best part is they delivered Colin’s big Lego order and better still, my Blue Microphone.
ApertureCast here I come.

By the way, if you are the Avon Lady that had her box left in the rain in Wolcott… it was neither of these guys.
Must be DHL

Some Comments from my old Blog about this post:
Travis
Hi, Ken. Nice Web site. It appears you’re using the iWeb program to create and publish Web pages on a Mac. I recently bought a Mac and started playing with the iWeb software – are you pleased with it?

Also, it appears that your iWeb pages are presented cohesively as part of your huthphoto Web site. I didn’t feel as if I’d left your professional site and gone to a .mac site to view your family pages. If you integrated .mac pages with your professional Web site, how did you do it?

For instance, here:

I’d like to have my main page hosted, say, by Yahoo!, which then would point to .mac pages, but I was concerned it would be too abrupt to be cohesive. You seem to have mastered that problem!
Friday, July 14, 2006 – 09:45 AM

Ken
Hi Travis, thanks so much for checking the site and blog out (and the nice comments too.)
I use RapidWeaver for the main frame of the site (it’s a Mac only program that makes it easy to create very nice sites using CSS)
http://www.realmacsoftware.com/

RapidWeaver lets you create a pretty flexible kind of frame around any external page. So, you are right, you caught me using Apple’s iWeb for my kids sites and this blog. I use iWeb because of the awesome look of the pages and control of the Blog. For the kids, it’s easy to use and totally hooks them up with iPhoto for photo galleries and GarageBand for Podcasts.

RapidWeave comes with ‘themes’ like PowerPoint or Keynote, so it’s extremely easy to change the look of your site, and not to look too cookie-cutter like other template sites.

Enjoy the new Mac and shout again with any questions. Post the link to your site here when you get it online, so we all can check it out.
cheers,
Ken
Saturday, July 15, 2006 – 10:50 PM

Ken
One more thing… companies are coming out all the time with themes for RW like this:
Elixer Graphics

So you can pick amazing looking themes for around $10-$20.

Also, RW has is just releasing version 3.5 in Beta, so it keeps getting better and better.
Saturday, July 15, 2006 – 11:06 PM

Travis
Hi, Ken. Thanks very much for the information regarding RapidWeaver! That was a new one to me, so I read about it, and purchased it. I’m having all kinds of fun working with it, trying to learn it from the beginnng. It looks really easy to use.

Why is it that I always seem to stumble upon these cool software applications at the end of the weekend? Thanks again for the great tip, and I’ll be back with more questions before you know it.
Sunday, July 16, 2006 – 07:27 PM

lidie girl
hey dad! nice thingy.
Tuesday, August 1, 2006 – 05:00 PM

MicMan Ken
Now I’m using my cool new mic for Podcasts!

(geeks can skip this section)

What’s a Podcast? Its an easy, internet way to get audio and video info to people… kind of like internet radio that you can subscribe to and have delivered to your computer daily.
Please check out the Podcasts link at the top of this page to see how you can listen online or subscribe.
Tuesday, August 8, 2006 – 02:40 PM

Travis
Hi, Ken. I enjoyed listening to your podcast. The technology is mind-boggling these days. If I didn’t have an actual job, I’d stay home all day and master these software options!

A question about your Blue Snowball mic… Is that what you used for the podcast? What are your thoughts about the mic? I’ve read lots of praise, but also lots of criticism about regular voice recording with the mic – people saying the playback level is too soft… apparently Blue is coming up with some sort of software patch.

One last question to get a handle on the quality of your podcast audio. Were you using a pop filter? Thanks!
Thursday, August 10, 2006 – 10:17 AM

Ken
I really love the Blue Snowball. If anything, I think it’s too loud and I have to keep it down in the setup (on Mac, under System Prefs/Sound I had to lower it to the mid-level default setting, compared to my previous (Griffin Lav mic)
I think the sound quality is similar to pro mics I’ve used at radio stations. Really wonderful and rich.

I still haven’t totally figured out the best sound. I didn’t use a pop-screen, but plan to fake one (the pantyhose on hanger trick!). I tried not to pop and had the mic a bit to one side. I use Garageband to record and the ‘Radio voice Male’ is the setting I choose.

I’ve searched for a better mic for ages, and when I had the Apple $$ they rebated us early Aperture adopters, I jumped at the chance to get the snowball from the Apple store.
It’s also very versatile, with 3 switchable settings. I prefer #1 (the cartoid, not Omni) for voice.

Oh, and I do see an update on their site

Thanks for asking! Tell your friends about the podcast. The client one will be out by the end of the week and I’ll get iTunes listing.
Thursday, August 10, 2006 – 10:35 AM