photo slide shows

There are more than 300 updates to version 5 of ProShow Producer and ProShow Gold, says developer Photodex, “designed to improve the user interface and add unprecedented effects to users’ slideshows.”

New features include 3D tilt effects, GPU acceleration, and new slide styles and transitions.

ProShow is “an intuitive software tool that lets people easily mix photos, video clips and music together into polished video slideshows,” the company says.

ProShow Gold 5 is $70; ProShow Producer is $250.

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Google’s Picasa makes “Face movies”

A cool new slide show: Face Movies.

The latest version of Google’s free downloadable photo editing software Picasa adds an intriguing new feature: “Face movies” which creates a video from still photos, aligning the images to the selected face in the photo. “This creates an extremely smooth viewing experience,” Google says, “which allows the person in the photos to remain the focus, rather than the transition effects themselves.”

It’s a cool technique. A demonstration is here.

Google has also added the Picnik online photo editor to Picasa 3.8, and a batch upload function from Picasa to Picasa Web Albums.