Make Digital Photos Into A Pro Slide Show.

How many digital photos sit on your Mac? Here’s a way to take average photos and make a movie or a slide show with stunning quality.

Forget iMovie and iPhoto. Today’s Mac has tools that are so good the pros use them in movie and television production.

I’m a big fan of the so-called Ken Burns effect. You see it in iPhoto and in iMovie. Take a digital photo and add a bit of motion; zoom and pan. That’s cool.

It’s cool because it takes those static photos that are blah lah and adds character and flavor and warmth by stringing together different shots with full screen motion.

iPhoto and iMovie add such motion to digital photos. Even better is what you can do with FotoMagico, one of my favorite photo tools.

The latest version features new enhancements, perfect for the professional wannabe. There’s a lower price tag and a set of effects that remarkable.

FotoMagico takes photos from iPhoto, or drag and drop from other Mac applications, and lets you create a slide show of photos. Not just any slide show.

Slide shows are easy in iPhoto, not difficult in iMovie, but nothing spectacular until you drop photos in FotoMagico. Bambi and I use FotoMagico for presentations. Instead of static slides, we get special effects and movement, which tends to grab and hold the viewer.

Drop photos onto a time line, control effects between photos, including transitions, movement, and effects. The controls are simple to use, highly precise, and yield results that are so good they show up in movies.

What’s so special about a slide show on your Mac? That’s just it. It’s not just a slide show of your photos on your Mac.

FotoMagico is capable of producing art, television commercials, standalone video and audio presentations.

Where there’s a digital photo time line, there’s an audio time line. Drop in whatever audio suits your need, and then drop in photos and transitions to match the audio. You can’t do that in iPhoto and it’s painful in iMovie.

We’re entering the age of High Definition and FotoMagico is already there. Export pre-sets include sending your production to iDVD, iWeb, iPod, and in HD 720 or HD 1080 for high def. QuickTime movies of all shapes and sizes are supported, too.

The whole of FotoMagico is greater than the sum of the parts. For example, creating a simple digital slide show is a breeze and takes mere minutes. Add audio and you’ve increased the production value.

Then, sync up the digital photos and transitions to match the audio. Now you’re nearing professional quality presentations. Add text to each photo element, and synchronize movement of the text on screen to the slides and audio.

It’s quite similar to the expensive character generation used in TV commercials and movies. In fact, it’s so similar that some production houses actually use FotoMagico for pro productions.

FotoMagico’s feature list is longer than ever, yet the interface is iMovie friendly-- if you can use iMovie, you can use FotoMagico.

Even better, FotoMagico Express is lower in price than the original FotoMagico, yet comes with more features. FotoMagico Pro adds Aperture library integration, and can export slides shows in a standalong player, and in HD.

It’s good to see Mac developers paying attention to the user base. FotoMagico’s price is lower, features greater, and there’s a family pack license for 5 computers in a household.

What’s missing? I would love to seem some slide templates for transitions. Yes, they’re easy to build your own, but starting with something first makes it that much quicker to finish something that looks good.

I’d also like to see more numeric control over some of the transitions, but these are minor nits, considering the quality of output in FotoMagico.

Here’s the challenge. Download the demo version, and check out the included HD slide show demo. Let us know what you think.

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