![]() FotoMagico's interface resembles iMovie, but has a nice side-by-side before and after view when arranging a slide. Other effects included include one that gives a sense of a camera lens closing (much like the effect used in the iPhone’s camera) and a really spectacular zoom effect which, when used in conjunction with a close up and distance shot of the same scene, can create an amazingly realistic sense of “zooming out” to the distance shot. Moreover, the program makes it possible not only to move the photo around and adjust zoom levels as in the iLife programs, the user can also cause the image to rotate during the effect’s duration, something that can be adjusted using a “wheel” button displayed below the image preview. Unlike in iMovie, which requires the user to toggle the preview to adjust the start and destination of the Ken Burns effect, the before and after views of pan and scan are shown side by side for easy adjustment in FotoMagico. The method of adjusting the effect is also much more intuitive. The pan and scan effect too can be tweaked individually, but without giving up the randomization of the effect on slides that are left untweaked. The impressively intuitive interface allows the user to quickly click on one or multiple transitions and swap them for other effects – some that iMovie has, as well as some unique ones that seem perfect for dealing with photos. That said, FotoMagico’s iPhoto-like ease is combined with more iMovie-like control. Likewise, adding photos was a one step process: there was no need to apply transitions afterwards – they were already added in. Conveniently, FotoMagico provides random pan and scan effects over the photos so that the slideshow can be used immediately and look great, without manually tweaking each photo – much like iPhoto’s default “automatic Ken Burns” effect, as opposed to the iMovie Ken Burns effect. The speed comes at the cost of requiring that everything be rendered later (if you plan to use the slideshow outside of FotoMagico), before the movie can be sent to iDVD, but depending on your workflow, pushing off the entire rendering process until the end of the project may be quite beneficial. ![]() When I dropped over 700 photos into the timeline, it was able to pull them into the project briskly (in just a couple of minutes, as opposed to an exponentially longer period of time in iMovie). A few minutes around FotoMagico will disabuse any skeptic of doubts about the matter.įotoMagico’s focus on photos resolves the first issue I described with iMovie. At first, I doubted whether there is an advantage to a program that is more specifically focused than iMovie, but uses a highly similar interface. Anyone who has used Apple’s iLife suite will immediately feel at home – especially those who are use to iMovie HD’s interface, which FotoMagico follows very closely with great results. That might as well be the description of FotoMagico. What has been really needed is a program that is meant to give iMovie-like control, but is oriented specifically to photo slideshow projects. Rendering takes a lot of time as well – both for the initial addition of pan and zoom and the addition of appropriate transitions. That is, unlike watching a real Ken Burns documentary, left without further intervention, iMovie will have the “camera” repeatedly follow the exact same movement on photo after photo like a broken record. In iPhoto one can opt for automatic application of the effect, but doing so disables the ability to customize zooming for individual photos. iPhoto works well, but is not entirely intuitive if one desires really granular control iMovie HD gives plenty of control, but at a price of speed and convenience (Note: at press time Apple had just released iMovie ’08, which will be considered at a later date).īoth programs can batch apply pan and zoom effects for hundreds of photos at once, but it is the exact same effect that is applied to each photo. More recently, I have gotten into the habit of using iMovie directly to render the photos with the Ken Burns effect and transitions, which makes it somewhat easier to tweak settings for individual photos. When I first started doing such projects, I was frequently content to let iPhoto render a slideshow, perhaps exporting it to iMovie to handle the soundtrack and a few other minor details before burning. There are a variety of ways to do this, but most of them give less than perfect results and control or they are too time intensive. ![]() A few weeks ago, for example, I was preparing a set of photos for a wedding DVD. In an age of digital photos and easy DVD burning, it is becoming common to take a set of photos and burn them into some form that can be played on a DVD player.
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