Digital Photographer's Software Guide - Bertemes - Net

Supported file formats: JPEG or GIF (smaller than 3MB); MP3
Price level: Free to users
Address: New York, NY, United States
www.animoto.com
Note
SWF ’n Slide
Chapter 27 ■ Slide Show Creation 315
It is essential to reduce the size of your images to 3MB or smaller before attempting
to use Animoto. For Macintosh users, the developers recommend the free DroPic!
utility (www.kreynet.de/dropic/). Windows users can use VSO Image Resizer
(www.vso-software.fr). However, there are many other, similar utilities that perform
the same task.
Vendor: Vertical Moon
Purpose: Create photo slide shows in Flash with your digital images and audio
Description
SWF ’n Slide is a program that lets you put your slides and some music together into a
professional-looking slide show in Adobe’s Flash file format. It will also output HTML
so that you can create a Web page on which you can place the show.
SWF ’n Slide comes in two editions—Standard and Professional. The Professional edition
has a WYSIWYG workspace and more viewing types including scrolling thumbnails
and a 3D Album (a page-turning simulation). The program lets you add sound
effects, narration, or background music, together with playback control buttons so that
the viewer can pause or play the slide show. There are over 150 transition effects, special
effects such as fireworks, falling snow, and hearts that can be superimposed on the slides,
pan and zoom camera effects, plus resize, crop, rotate, and flip. You can even add a preloader
to enable smooth playback over the Internet.
Comments
Created by Flash specialists who know what they are doing technically, SWF ’n Slide is
a versatile and reliable application that is great fun to use. Reviews have been highly
favorable, mentioning that it is well laid-out, easy-to-use, and has excellent file handling
facilities. So far, so good—but the name? The vendor points out that 97% of browsers
have Flash playback facilities. This is true, but what percentage of users knows that SWF,
the Flash file format, is pronounced “swiff”?