FotoMagico has long been a popular
photographic slideshow authoring tool, valued for its ease of use and
professional results. Like the automated slideshow player in iMovie, it gives
still images added interest using the Ken Burns effect, where the image is
zoomed and panned to give the illusion of motion.
Unlike the iMovie version, FotoMagico lets
you specify the start and end points of each image. So rather than arbitrarily
zooming into a random region, you can zoom into or out of a point of interest,
optionally rotating the image as it zooms. Or, for a panorama shot, you can
choose to pan rather than zoom, or use a combination of the two. You can also
add zooming and scrolling text as required.
FotoMagico
FotoMagico can also time transitions to
match a music soundtrack. Although you can condense or stretch the timing of
the whole slideshow to match a track’s length automatically, you get far better
results by manually telling FotoMagico when to change slide by tapping the ‘M’
key in time with the bar changes or other highlights in the music.
Version 4 brings some valuable new features,
the most notable being the introduction of the Timeline view. Individual
slides now occupy a horizontal space that matches their duration. Any added
soundtrack is shown as its waveform, which can help when matching transitions.
You can blend multiple soundtracks, and you can set the fade amount by dragging
up and down on the volume control. All fades need to be set within the confines
of a single slide, though, which seems like an unnecessary restraint.
FotoMagico
can work with movies as well as still images, and can even blend them together
and incorporate both at the same time.
As well as combining multiple audio tracks,
you can include up to six images per slide, so multiple images can fade in and
out on top of one another, and can also rotate, move and scale independently.
For instance, you could pan across a panorama and have multiple images coming
into view to illustrate points on the landscape as the camera pans past them.
However, an inset image can’t span two background images and there’s currently no
way to crop an inset image, although this is planned for a future incremental
update.
If a very large image is scaled to a very
small size, it will require extra processing, which could slow down the
slideshow. Fortunately, FotoMagico warns you of this and offers the option to
reduce the image to the size it’s required, or to reduce the size of all the
images in the slideshow. This will mean you can’t then enlarge them without
replacing them with the original images, but it does result in much smoother viewing.
FotoMagico can work with movies as well as
still images, and can even blend them together and incorporate both at the same
time. Movies are treated just the same, with pan, zoom and rotation.
FotoMagico
was previously available in Home ($29) and Pro ($139) versions
Finished projects can be exported directly
to YouTube, a QuickTime movie, Apple TV or to a standalone player that can be
shared on other Macs. It can also be exported to iOS devices - you’re simply
asked which device you have, so you don’t need to work out the screen
dimensions or resolution yourself. As well as creating self-running slideshows,
you can also control them with an additional iOS app, available for $5 from the
App Store.
FotoMagico was previously available in Home
($29) and Pro ($139) versions. Now the Home version has been axed and the price
for the Pro version dropped by $40. While this closes off the entry-level route
into the app, it does mean serious users get a lot more power for less.
In all, FotoMagico is a powerful yet easy-
to-use application that produces impressive results with minimal effort.
Perfect timing
FotoMagico’s new Timeline view allows
complex slideshows to be created easily, with visual feedback
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Details
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Price: $105
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From: Mac App Store
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Info: boinx.com
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Needs: OS X 10.7.4
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Pro: Smooth slideshow
creation * Multiple images per slide * New Timeline view
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Con: No Home version *
Slightly clumsy multiple slide image spanning
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