Photodex ProShow Producer And Style Pack Full Version
Phillipp Schneeberger
Photodex is a multimedia software company created in 1987, with popular software ProShow lineup (ProShow Gold, ProShow Producer and ProShow Web) focusing on slideshow creation. The software was loved by millions of users worldwide for over 30 years, and there are still active communities and forums online these days.
However, Photodex decided to pull the plug on the service. Its servers were shut down on January 31, 2020. Their official website photodex.com no longer provides any product or service, instead, the website owner recommended Photopia as an alternative slideshow maker to the ProShow products.
Photodex was founded by Paul Schmidt in 1987 with a vision to create good software. Focusing on multimedia, this software company released its first slideshow software in the 90s, named Graphic Display System (GDS), and that experience was later incorporated into their tagline products, the ProShow lineup.
Photodex created CompuPic lineup, photo management software that allowed people to easily browse and organize digital photos. The tools were released during the mid-1990s, when the first digital cameras were available to the public. Their official site was registered on August 11, 1995 in Arizona.
In the early 2000s, Photodex set out to develop software that can help people to turn their photo assets into enchanting slideshows. The result was the first version of ProShow, released in November of 2002.
ProShow Web was launched in 2010 on photodex.com. This online service integrated the slideshow making feature of the ProShow software, and offered downloadable effects and other creative packages to level up video creation.
ProShow Gold is Photodex's basic product of the slideshow maker lineup. It is aimed at beginners and everybody having an interest in turning photos and videos into a slideshow. While ProShow Producer targets more advanced users, ProShow Gold offers basic tools to create music slidershow, photo slideshows and family videos, making the video fully customized and attractive.
The UI of ProShow Gold is timeline-based, though its early versions don't have multiple tracks on the timeline. Users can import photos and videos onto the timeline, set their respective duration, and add transitions and effects. Background music can be imported to a dedicated audio track, with wave form displayed.
For photos, there are some handy editing features and effects. You can blur a photo in video, and adjust its brightness, white point, black point, contrast, hue, saturation and more right inside the software. There are photo fix tools such as red-eye removal, photo sharpening, etc.
To stylize the photo slideshow, ProShow Gold also allows you to add vignettes, colorize images, create text animations, and add motion effects. For instance, you can create the trendy Ken Burns effect to animate the photos.
As a product that had been existing for over 3 decades, ProShow Gold grew into a modern software. For instance, its older versions don't have a stock music library built-in. The interface underwent radical changes, from archaic Windows XP style to flat designs.
This slideshow marker also offers free trial and demo download options, but there will be a watermark on the output file. Purchased users don't need to re-make the video though, as the watermark will be removed from the project file.
For better device compatibility, ProShow offers several profiles for devices such as iPhone, iPod, MP3 players, and Nintendo Wii. During its heyday, Photodex also can host slideshows on the official website, so that users can share and communicate with one another.
ProShow Producer is the big brother of ProShow Gold. If ProShow Gold is designed for newbies, then Producer is intended for skilled hands. It includes more features that require some learning curve for beginners. For instance, there are keyframe adjustments, customizable transitions, and masking options in ProShow Producer. Using the keyframes, users can create animations to add more dynamics to the slideshow, and control more flexibly over the motions. With the masking and multiply layer option, users can place more items on top of the video content, making the overlays more attractive and interesting to look at.
As a professional slideshow and presentation software, ProShow Producer includes everything that ProShow Gold offers. Users can bring in photos, videos and songs, and add transitions, video effects, and captions.
There were video effects popular at that time, such as the page-flipping simulation, vignettes, photo walls, sparks, and fades. Besides 800+ motion and transition templates, users can also tap on the customizable settings to create endless variations.
ProShow Producer also includes a slideshow wizard to speed up the workflow. People can simply dump the photo and video assets, follow the instructions to create slideshows in less in 5 minutes. The built-in sharing option allows for quick uploading to YouTube and Photodex's own creator's hub.
Another product from Photodex is ProShow Web. It is an online video slideshow maker, inheriting some of the basic features form the ProShow desktop lineup. Claiming to help users to create slideshows without any editing experience, ProShow Web included some of the presets and templates from its desktop counterparts, making it easy to add text, animations, transitions, sound effects, and video FX.
The integration between ProShow Producer and ProShow web is a nice feature. Users can open ProShow Web shows in Producer, thus having more controls and features to continue enhancing the video. It also eases the transition when a beginner has outgrown ProShow web, and wants to set hands on the Pro version.
Besides saving as digital videos, it also allows you to export and download as high definition ISO files for DVD-burning. Depending on your license type, the supported resolution ranges from 720p to 1080p videos.
After the shutting down of Photodex, its official site recommends Photopia as an alternative. Photopia is a dedicated video slideshow maker, and rumors have it that Phototia is created by some of the original developers from Photodex.
Some of the communities related to Photodex products are still active these days. If you are one of the loyal customers of Photodex, and are still putting your creative hats on and editing in ProShow tools, you can seek help, share slideshows, and offer solutions to peer users in these communities.
Proshow Enthusiasts is a non-official forum for Photodex users, created on 2007 by Michael Gregg, this forum has 151K posts covering 19K topics, and is still active these days. The forum is home to nearly 3K registered users, though in recent years, there are only hundreds of visits each month.
It is a private group created by Dixie Reid, who is also an active user in the Proshow Enthusiasts forum. The group aims to help millions of people who still use ProShow, and are left behind by Photodex as the company is out of business. The group encourages peer-to-peer support, knowledge sharing, and slideshow demonstration.
Photodex on Vimeo mainly posted the ProShow 9 lineup, with brand videos showcasing new features of ProShow 9, and tutorial videos demonstrating how to use masks, keyframes, layer filters, and audio syncing features.
It is still unknown why Photodex had decided to terminate their business. If you visit their official website photodex.com these days, you would only see an official recommendation to use Photopia as a replacement for slideshow creation.
If you have registered ProShow products before Jan 31, 2020, you can continue using the software. You can activate the software with registration keys before Photodex shuts down their server. Effects and packages that were purchased previously will remain valid in the future. But online content, such as music library and downloadable content will no longer be accessible.
Cecilia Hwung is the editor-in-chief of Digiarty VideoProc. With over a decade of experience, she specializes in delivering insightful content on AI trends, video/audio editing, conversion, troubleshooting, and software reviews. Her expertise makes her a trusted ally in enhancing users' digital experiences.
Digiarty Software, established in 2006, pioneers multimedia innovation with AI-powered and GPU-accelerated solutions. With the mission to "Art Up Your Digital Life", Digiarty provides AI video/image enhancement, editing, conversion, and more solutions. VideoProc under Digiarty has attracted 4.6 million users from 180+ countries.
Any more, I just use a video editor for slide shows. Just as easy, and I don't have to worry about if the people viewing it have the right computer, can use exe files, etc. I can distribute to people's phones, tablets, PCs and Macs with equal ease.
Exactly. The old slideshow software - proshow and P2E are now outdated. A decent video editor will produce effectively the same output, generating EXE files is useless these days - just generate video files that can play on ANY device.
PTE AV Studio 10 is a full 64 bit program which can do many, many things not possible with other software including non-linear editors (Video Editors). Your assumption that "no one would really use them" is just dead wrong. Do yourself a huge favor and get better educated on this subject before giving out incorrect information. Your assumption that exe files can be replaced with video files is also incorrect. Thousand of people use executable files for presentations because of interactivity. It's simply not possible to take a video presentation and have total manual control because video is a "canned" presentation. There is no ability to make real-time decisions about which image to show next, or to go to a particular slide, etc. PTE is very popular with university professors who give presentations because of the versatility including the ability to produce EITHER exe shows or the highest quality video all in one software.
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