Creating slideshows in iPhoto is easy enough to do, but some of its features can be limiting. Slideshow Magic from Koingo Software aims to make up for those shortcomings, and to a degree it succeeds.
Slideshow Magic is an image presentation creation application along the same lines as the Slideshow option thatis included with iPhoto. Slideshow Magic, however, is not limited to working with the images in your iPhoto library, and it also includes a few features that arenit available in iPhoto.
 Slideshow Magic. |
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Adding images to a slideshow is pretty much a drag-and-drop affair, and once they are in Slideshow Magic, you can re-order them any way you like. Each slide can also have its own duration and transition effect. The number of transition effects far out numbers those that are available in iPhoto since Slideshow Magic has access to all of QuickTimeis built in transitions, not just the ones that iPhoto gives you access to.
Each slide can have its own title that appears as a caption, and you can set the font, type size, text color, and caption location. This is really handy if you want to annotate images, add section titles, or include other basic information about individual slides.
 Each slide can have its own caption. |
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Each slide can also have its own sound track, unlike iPhotois all-or-nothing approach to background music. You can also assign an audio track to an entire slideshow, but you canit assign audio to a group of slides, which was one feature I was really hoping to see.
 Project movie settings. |
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Your projects are saved as Slideshow Magic files that reference the images in your presentation. To pass your project onto someone else, youill have to save it as a QuickTime movie. The movie options are fairly flexible, and let you set the movie dimensions in pixels, choose which QuickTime video codec to use, set the compression quality, and scale movies if they donit match the dimensions you set.
 The finished product, saved as a QuickTime movie. |
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Even though Slideshow Magic is easy to learn, it would be nice to see a short PDF included with the installer just to show you the basics. The application instructions are available on the Koingo Web site, but it is nice to have something else available if you plan on using the application when Internet access isnit available.
The Bottom Line
Slideshow Magic is a versatile slideshow creation tool, but it isnit a replacement for iPhotois Slideshow feature. Instead, it feels more like a nice supplement to iPhoto since it offers audio and captions for each slide, as well as a much longer list of transition effects. I always like having a versatile collection of tools available, so I wonit be deleting Slideshow Magic off my hard drive any time soon.