Secrets of Proshow Experts: The Official Guide to Creating Your Best Slide Shows with ProShow Gold and Producer 1st Edition

This is an excellent how-to book about not just Proshow products, but also making rich-media shows. The author is the founder of Proshow, which has developed the Photoshop equivalent of slide-show software.I have been a Producer user from the days the software required a key you inserted into the USB drive to validate your copy and they charged $500 for the program. Then they realized it wasn't selling well, and they dropped the price to $250 and gave those suckers who paid $500 no relief in upgrading. Buying Proshow is like subscribing to a magazine, it will cost you $89 to renew every year. Unfortunately, the software remains fairly limited and buggy on the menu-creation side, and you really need a program like Encore and DVD Architect, the later I can't recommend because it has some serious support and compatibility issues.But, if you want to create slide shows and have a full slate of tools and effects available, and aren't afraid to drop $500 or more on the program and then the style packs and other goodies sold separately, Producer is the way to go.This book addresses both the the Producer and Pro Show Gold products. It does a good job of showing work arounds if you have only the consumer version, but it will leave you wanting to buy the Producer product. It covers a lot of the tricks you see people using in shows at the Proshow sharing site, which is a great resource for inspiration and both bad and good shows. Indeed, one of the best parts of the book is at the very back, where "expert users" share their techniques and tips. From the cover, you'd expect to hear a lot more of their voices throughout the book, but rather their wisdom is relegated to a few pages at the very end.One of the things that bothered me about this book is the author's lack of understanding about the history of slide shows. To read this book, you'd get the impression he invented the whole rich-media concept and the techniques used to bring still images to life. Not so. For many years, starting around the 1950s, until the demise of Arion in the early 00s, professional slide shows used techniques like masking, dissolves and even animation. These shows, often called multi-image slide productions, often included 16mm film clips, as well. The shows used two or more projectors to create complex dissolve, masking and animation sequences. As the number of projectors grew -- 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 and even more -- so did impact of the shows. The investment was huge, and the shows often spread over screens 30 to 60 feet wide.Speaking of which, one of the experts in the book refers to using a 30-foot LCD at or near the guestbook of weddings, on which the slide shows are run! Wow! I'm guessing it's 30-inch, just as, Paul Schmidt's comment that slide trays could hold up to 130 slides is off the mark. Kodak's top tray capacity was 140, but never used in professional shows because they were prone to jamming. 80 was top capacity.I'm nitpicking here, however. The book is good at what it sets out to do, and is much needed as the Proshow training materials direct from the software manufacturer are pretty expensive. This book will give you lots of good ideas. Just don't put too much stock in his history of the slide show development, however. The book suffers from these little typos and lack of thorough research that drive me, a newspaper editor, up a wall. It seems like the world is in such a rush to get products to market and return the investment little effort is put into proofing. This has been the history of the Proshow software, as well.I would definitely recommend this book over the other Proshow book, which was outdated when it was released because, to make their annual fee off the software, Photodex keeps changing the product.

First off, this is not the book to buy if you want to learn how to use Photodex ProShow Gold or Producer. For that purpose, you want James Karney's "The Official Photodex Guide to ProShow 4". Rather, author Paul Schmidt is the founder and President of Photodex, the company that has essentially revolutionized slideshow production with its Photodex ProShow line, explains that his intent is to show the reader how to make a great slideshow. He does it, too. Schmidt spends a few pages talking about the basic elements of a great slideshow and then gradually slips into techniques to produce those great slideshows with ProShow. But this is not an instruction manual, per se. It is an odd blend of good advice with examples on the accompanying DVD. If you don't already own ProShow, you'll want to download a trial copy to use with the book. I would suspect that Schmidt talks a lot about the ProShow products. He is, after all, one of its principal designers and appears at trade shows, speaks to groups and so on. The book is written in the style of someone speaking. It is casual language, bur well crafted and very comfortable to read. It is surprising, in a way, that the book works as well as it does. It is principally a how-to book, despite the author's warning that he doesn't intend to teach the reader how to use ProShow - and he doesn't. But yet he uses ProShow as a demonstration and teaching tool. He explains certain techniques and effects, uses ProShow to demonstrate them, but doesn't really get into the nitty-gritty of showing you how to use ProShow. By all rights, the approach shouldn't work - but it does work and works well. Overall, Schmidt serves his readers well. His explanations of what makes a slideshow stand out are excellent. The tricks and techniques he explores are fresh and interesting. And there are a lot of little insights that he peppers throughout the text that explain the workings of ProShow and bits and pieces that will help you create better presentations. So, while this is not a highly technical manual that will teach you specifically how to use every feature of Photodex ProShow, it is a fine book on the techniques of making great slideshows and a very worthwhile addition to every presenter's library.Jerry

I have used ProShow Gold and ProShow Producer for several years making me fairly experienced with the power and detailed capabilities. In getting a book at this time in my learning curve, I was looking for new ideas and new creative tricks that I haven't been able to master so far.After reading only about 50%, I have been pleasantly surprised by the insight and ideas on ways to think about dynamic slide shows provided by the book's author and creator of ProShow. I have even picked up a few shortcut concepts that have already saved me time editing audio tracks.As the book states, this is not a "how the tool works" book, it is a "how to see and design a dynamic slide show" book. The casual and supportive tone of the author brings his ideas to all users who know the basic mechanics of the tools or can figure them out. The graceful tone of the text covers theory and illuminates new creative ideas and structures - even for the expert.I have 50% of the book to go and inside of that, I am looking forward to even more revealations.

I've been producing audio-visual shows, first with 35mm slides and now with digital images, set to music and voice-overs, for more than 20 years. I've conducted workshops and demonstratins on how to do this, to my photo club and once to a national photography conference. I've used three different software programs to produce digital AV, most recently ProShow Producer.From that perspective, I can tell you this book is a treasure-trove of excellent ideas and tips on how to produce a great audio-visual presentation, regardless of what software you use. The examples shown in the illustrations are all from ProShow, and of course all the example material on the companion DVD (which is excellent) use ProShow examples, but the DVD includes a 15-day trial edition of the software so you can examine how the samples were constructed in that software. You don't even need to do that, however; the DVD has EXE versions of all the examples, which you can run on any Windows computer without needing the ProShow software at all. The principles demonstrated in the examples and discussed in the text apply to all AV software, Mac or PC.I strongly recommend this book for anyone who is serious about audio-visual production as well as for those starting out. I particularly commend the author, who is founder and president of Photodex Corporation which makes ProShow, for his repeated calls of "just because you CAN do something doesn't mean it helps your show," and "if you can't think of a good reason to do something, DON'T." A common beginner's error is to try every trick in the software in their very first show, usually with disastrous-to-laughable results, and ProShow with its wealth of features and options tempts many users to make this error. Schmidt's chapters, and the examples on the DVD, go a very long way toward showing when certain tricks are effective and (in a number of cases) when they are best left alone.Full marks for a great book on this subject.

In reviewing the book "The Official Photodex Guide to Proshow 4" by james Karney, I wrote:"Through and meticulous in presentation and explanation. DVD examples clearly demonstrate features of Proshow Gold and Producer. In brief, I believe that Proshow is the "Photoshop of slideshow software" and therefore benefits greatly instuctional material such as this book. The manual that comes with the software is not nearly as comprehensive or easy to follow as this book and does not come with a DVD with examples."This book "The Secrets of Proshow Experts" by Paul Schmidt (founder and president of Photodex Corporation) requires a good working knowledge of Proshow Gold or Producer and comes with a DVD with relevant examples of the material in the book. It is a perfect followup to the Photodex Guide (reviewed above). It focuses on multi-media concepts and clearly illustrates the ideas described in the book through the examples on the DVD.Ray

Well written and informative book if you are into ProShow AV productions. Always nice to have guide to go to rather than just playing with the software.

Awesome

The Schmidt book is one of three covering the "Slide show" program Proshow,and would be purchasers should be warned that without one or other of the two other publications they will be wasting their money, for this is not an instruction book, and without a grounding in the use of the program most of its content will be above their heads. Having said that,for an existing user, wishing to expand their creative muscles, the book serves its purpose.There is however a fair amount of airey waffle stating the blindingly obvious,but equally their are many examples ( some clearly explained, others less so) which will start a creative user thinking. The Canfield and Karney books both have their faults, but without one or other (or both in my case)one will not gain from this book, and I suppose the gain by Pro Show Gold users (The simpler of the two programs.....Producer is the one with all the bells and whistles and is great fun once the headaches have gone) is marginal, Schmidt makes it clear that the target audience for Gold is very different from Producer, and much of the creative clout which can be derived from owning this publication derives from the latter.Two variants of the book appear to be on offer, but I gather the content is identical...don't buy one without it's acccompanying DVD.