Introduction

What makes a good slide show great? In reality, most of us have an intuitive idea of how to create a basic slide show, but without careful study, most people underestimate the number of tricks that make a great slide show. When you’re ready to go beyond the basics and do more with your shows, when you’re ready to create a piece of art and not just another slide show, you’ll find this book is for you.

Before I started writing this book, I knew there was a gap in the available educational material about one of the most common things that people want to do—make slide shows. The capabilities promised by the computer and photography industries had stretched people’s expectations far beyond simplicity, and few were educating how to do it. I didn’t realize how much of a gap there was until I had committed to this book.

In my research for the book, I was shocked that I could not find a single book precisely on this subject. There were many books on business presentations, video editing, and film making. Even these books were surprisingly sparse on the tips and tricks I already knew made great slide shows work.

Why had nobody written a good book on the subject? The simultaneous evolution of digital photography, computers, and television had collided, causing a vacuum of knowledge, superimposed on a geyser of technical capability, combined with a fantastically large number of consumers with the same agenda: slide shows. These consumers have different media than previous markets. The media they have is produced with different intentions than before. The customers want end results slightly differently from ever before. And they want to know how to make that happen.

This book is about what makes a great slide show; this is not just a book about ProShow, though. I intentionally don’t explain how to use ProShow’s user interface or exactly how ProShow works. Instead, ProShow comes with a comprehensive User’s Guide that you should refer to for that. I’ve included ProShow examples on the DVD, and I strongly encourage you to study them to understand what I’ve done to construct them.

The content of this book could easily be applied to any number of different types of software, including business presentation programs, video editors, and 3D animation programs. ProShow is used as the example application, but most of the core principles apply.

This book is about concepts first and methods second. To make a great show, you really do need a solid understanding of the concepts. Without this, you won’t understand why the methods work. Once you understand the concepts, you’ll be able to refine your own methods using the starting points I offer. My hope is that you will take what you learn from this book and apply it in new ways to audiences. I’m hoping I can see examples of this in the future and learn from those who have learned from me.

The approach I’ve taken is one I hope will expedite the learning process. I intentionally do not include step-by-step instructions for controlling ProShow. Instead, I teach the basics and use them to build more and more detail. Finally, I give examples as much as possible to demonstrate one new thing at a time. As you read through the book and study the examples, you’ll be absorbing one trick after another and gaining what I hope is a much more complete understanding of the factors that affect slide show construction as a whole.

Using the DVD Examples

The DVD included with this book is organized into three folders: one called Example Shows, containing executable (*.EXE) files for each example in the book; one called ProShow Gold Materials, containing all show files and styles for all examples compatible with ProShow Gold; and one called ProShow Producer Materials, containing show files and styles for all examples in this book.

Readers can refer to all *.EXE examples in the Example Shows folder.

Readers with a license for ProShow Gold will not be able to load the ProShow Producer show files into ProShow Gold because they require ProShow Producer. One way to see these examples is to download and install a trial version of ProShow Producer and use the trial version to inspect the show files for the ProShow Producer examples.

Readers with a license for ProShow Producer can ignore the ProShow Gold folder, because all the examples in the book are included in the ProShow Producer folder.

In each of the ProShow Gold Materials and ProShow Producer Materials folders, there are two subfolders: the Example Show Source Material folder containing show files for each example in the book, and the Slide Styles folder containing ProShow style (*.PXS) files, which can be imported into ProShow.

All executable (*.EXE) files, show (*.PSH) files, and style (*.PXS) files have been named using this format:

Chapter ##-Number ##.*

Each example in the book is uniformly named with a chapter number and sequence number. You can easily find an associated file on the disc by matching the numbers.

Other Sources

If you find yourself overwhelmed with being able to reproduce the examples I give in this book with ProShow, you may also benefit greatly from another excellent book called The Official Photodex Guide to ProShow 4 by Jim Karney. His book is a step-by-step instruction guide covering the functional operation of the ProShow products.

I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it.

DVD-ROM Downloads

If you purchased an ebook version of this book, and the book had a companion DVD-ROM, we will mail you a copy of the disc. Please send ptrsupplements@cengage.com the title of the book, the ISBN, your name, address, and phone number. Thank you.