Over the last years I found out that the most time consuming part for me is to deal with the Geometry of different pictures in a slideshow.
I use pictures from 3 different cameras with different formats and it takes too much time for me to adapt the Geometry because it will never be right.
I would love to have some buttons between the two pictures where I could copy Geometry or title positions from left to right or right to left. I think this would help a lot to save time.
On top of each pic left and rigth there should be buttons for scaling (Fit, Whole pic, 100%) that give users the possibilty to quickly apply sacling to images.
Furthermore (not sure if there is a chance in FM 5) templates for Geometry, Scaling and Titles would be highly appreciated. And there should be a possibility to apply these templates to all pictures, even pics and odd pics as well.
Copying Geometry: its already there! Select the image you want to copy the geometry from and then you have two options to accomplish your task:
a) Go to the menu “Edit” and select “Copy Geometry” or
b) right click on the image to get a context menu and select “Copy Geometry” here
Now select the second image (or even the same image in the other view) and either hit the menu item “Edit > Past Geometry” or go with the context menu again with the same menu item.
Fitting your image to the stage: In this case you have three options after you selected the image in question:
a) Select the menu item “Slideshow > Zoom > Fill Stage completely” or
b) right click on the image and select the same menu item here “Zoom > Fill Stage completely” or
c) hit “alt-cmd-1” on you keyboard
There are three different zooming modes you can choose from:
“Fill Stage completely” (no black bars)
“Show Whole Image” (image fits to screen, having black bars on the smaller sides)
“Show at 100%” (calculates the correct Zoom so that one pixel in the image is using one pixel on screen, remember to setup your stage size correctly!)
Templates: Thats one of the biggest features we put into FotoMagico 5! We call them snippets and there are a lot of them predefined so you can just drag and drop them to your slideshow and drop your images into. If you want to have a look at them please take part in our beta program here: https://boinx.com/fotomagico/beta
I know there are some possibilities in the context menu, but let me explain why this is not good enough for me.
Copy Geometry
With the current implementation I have to do the following.
Click on the left picture. Go to the context menu and select “Copy Geometry”. Select the right pic. Go to the context menu --> Paste.
That means 4 mouseclicks. With my proposed solution it would be one! For hundreds of pics this makes a huge difference.
Also the Slideshow Assistent doesn´t help me at all. Why?
I have pics with different formats 1:1,4:3,3:2.
Now imagine I want to have a following slideshow.
I want to use the ken burns effect on even pics it should zoom in and on odd pics it should zoom out. That means on even pics the pic on the left side should be “Show whole image” and on odd pictures the right side should be “Show whole image”. And I want to define the amount of zooming.
If I try to do this with the slideshow assistent it messes up the slideshow completely.
If you have a fast solution for this you would make me very happy. I don´t see any and this is the main reason why it´s so time cunsuming to create a slideshow.
I’m going to pipe in here, since I have created a number of slideshows using FM. This is all my personal opinion. I dislike the Ken Burns effect being used on every single slide. Zoom in, zoom out, zoom in, zoom out, with a bit of movement attached. After the first 4 or 5 slides, it’s boring. It doesn’t add anything to the show, and is distracting. It had its place when it was first used, but now it is so OVERUSED that it’s become passé. The same goes with random or overly used transitions.
When I/we create our presentations, we use a simple dissolve from one slide to the next, and NO movement or zoom – UNLESS THE SUBJECT OF THE IMAGE CALLS FOR IT. Zooming in up a flight of stairs, perhaps. Or to a specific focal point of the image. To use the KB effect on every single slide is visually distracting and detracts from the viewer actually looking AT the image.
We also edit all of our shots in PS before even considering starting a slideshow. When I start a show, I import all of the photos with NO animation (there is no start and finish), and all slides are imported to FIT the stage (either vertically or horizontally – leaving the background bars visible depending on the orientation of the image). I then go in afterwards and decide if a slide needs animation or zoom, and adjust that slide accordingly.
As for copying geometry from slide to slide (or from start to finish for an animation), I find that it works perfectly for me.
Making a professional looking slideshow is what makes people want to watch it. It should be an art form to make a show look good. FM has what it takes to do pretty much that. I’ve been using it for a number of years and I’ve only been impressed with the features the Boinx team has added. Of course I would like to see more. But I’ve always found ways to make my slideshow do exactly what I want it to.
Well for one doing everything manually like you there is no need for features that would improve the workflow, but for me it is unacceptable to touch every single pic in a slideshow.
I guess there are more users out there that would prefer more control about the way FM adds zoom and animation and honestly I cannot see any disadvantage with this as you would still be able to all your adjustments manually.
But to argue improvements are not needed and everybody could work manually does not really help at least from my point of view.
Regarding your wish to zoom in/out on odd/even slides - Did you notice that this feature is still available in the the Animation Assistant in FM5? Just check “Zoom Images” and select “Alternating” from the Popup menu next to the checkbox. Let me know if this solves some of your problems…