ProShow Gold has the features you need to create a beautiful photo slideshow that you and your audience will enjoy. This slideshow software is our TopTenREVIEWS Bronze Award winner because it offers a large feature set, user-friendly interface and stunning slideshow quality. There are also dozens of input and output options available, which is a great advantage. If you have any questions or issues while using ProShow Gold, the company has outstanding customer service to help you along the way.
This slideshow creator offers all of the basic features that we look for in the best applications. ProShow Gold features 280 transitions effects, which is the largest number we saw on all of the photo slideshow applications we tested. This software does not place a limit on the number of images you can upload to your slideshows, and you can add multiple audio tracks to your slideshows, including voice recordings. However, we would have liked to see more background template options available. We could only find eight templates available on the application.
ProShow Gold is ideal for users of all skill levels. If you desire, a wizard can take you through the creation process to help you make an attractive slideshow fast. Or, you can use the extensive set of features available to make professional slideshows.
ProShow Gold gives you the ability to import music directly from a CD or music file with a single mouse click. The software also has simple DVD menu templates that you can customize if you want to burn your slideshows to DVDs.
You can record your own voice to use as a narration track and sync your slideshow to your music. You can also enjoy features such as built-in video editing and 3D tilt effects to really jazz up still photos and video clips.
For an additional whimsical touch, you can add some animations to photos in a simple, straightforward fashion. Click on the effect and then apply it to slides that you want to be animated. Animations include such things as simulated pages turning, zooming in on something interesting, rotating pictures, making montages with many photos and adding motion for impressive results.
You also can do traditional photo editing by cropping pictures, getting rid of unfortunate red eye and switching color photos to black and white.
ProShow Gold enables quick and easy publication to a number of media formats, including Flash, Auto-run CD, QuickTime and MPEG-2. However, the software doesn't support AVI files.
When it comes to sharing your slideshows, ProShow provides 40 output options. This photo slideshow software lets you save your slideshows as screensavers and as executable files, and you can choose to burn them to a CD, DVD or Blu-ray Disc. You also have the opportunity to share your photo slideshow creations with family and friends online by sending your image slideshows in an email, uploading them to ProShow Gold's sharing site or posting them on YouTube, Facebook or Vimeo.
For an additional fee, you can download plugins that will format your slideshow specifically for certain devices such as iPhones, Apple TV, PSP and other popular devices. While we appreciate such versatility, we are a little disappointed that the photo slideshow application charges for those specific output options; most of the slideshow makers on our lineup that do offer these options do so at no additional cost.
In the past, ProShow Gold was hindered by a clunky, unintuitive interface that took a long time to navigate and most likely tried the patience of the average consumer. However, the manufacturer, Photodex Corporation, has upgraded the latest version with a number of new characteristics, including such things as a wizard that enhances and strengthens this software's ease of use.
There is still a bit of a learning curve, but ProShow Gold more than makes up for that with its generous number of options for crafting exactly the visually and musically appealing slideshow you want. This software received one of the highest ease-of-use scores of all the photo slideshow applications we tested.
ProShow Gold offers assistance in the form of FAQs, email and telephone support. The customer phone and email support is available seven days a week, which is truly handy for anyone stuck at home struggling with a question about their DVD photo slideshow and finding no apparent answer from other help and support sources.
There is a user manual available online that you can download as a PDF. You also can check out the company's YouTube channel for various videos that explain how to use ProShow Gold and give you ideas for your own photo slideshows. There are tutorials on YouTube that can help you with any number of issues and give you suggestions for imaginative slideshows, as well as some helpful tips and tricks. Although you do not get any tutorials with the software itself, you can access plenty of help via YouTube that can show you useful tips on how to import photos, how to preview different styles and how to work with the video editing tools.
With tons of feature options and high quality slideshow output, ProShow Gold proves to be a top contender in the field of photo slideshow software. It would be hard to exhaust all the features available on this photo slideshow software, and you'll likely discover there are more features available on this application than you might ever need. There is somewhat of a learning curve, but once you've stepped over that hurdle, you'll be able to make wonderful photo slideshows with ProShow Gold.
