Multimedia Presentations

Microsoft PowerPoint 2003

$194.24 from Buy.com
 

Until Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 came out, I was a dedicated Corel Presentations user. There were certain things that previous versions of PowerPoint did better, particularly for business presentations. However, for multimedia productions, it could not compare to Presentations in some key areas.

However, I finally switched to PowerPoint when Version 2002 came out. The introduction of object animation timelines, as well as exit animations and animation paths put it into a completely different class.

ProShow Gold 2.5

$69.95 download (30-day free trial) from Photodex.com
 

ProShow Gold, from Photodex, is an excellent slide-show creation program. It has a large selection of the absolutely best slide transitions I know of in any program on the market.

Features include:

* Drag-and-drop interface for adding and moving slides

* Add text to slides - with equally great entrance and exit transitions.

* Add music on a time-line - and adjust the timing and duration of slides to within 1/1000th of a second in relation to the time-line. It will also allow you to automatically adjust the timing of the slideshow to fit the length of a specific music clip.

* Create stand-alone executable files with a DVD-like menu system, as well as custom screen-savers

ProShow ($29.95) is a less-expensive version that lacks some features of ProShow Gold

You can download a 30-day free trial of either version.

CompuPic 6.23

$69.95 download (30-day free trial) from Photodex.com
 

CompuPic (also from Photodex), is an excellent  multi-purpose multimedia program

First it is a graphics and photo file manager / browser.

It also allows you to do some basic photo editing such as exposure autocorrect, brightness and contrast adjustment, red-eye removal and resizing.

It also has a slideshow creator that is very easy to use. Just put all the pictures you want in the slideshow into a single folder, point to the folder and CompuPic will display all of the pictures sequentially or in random order for the time duration that you specify. All of the slide transitions that available in ProShow are included in CompuPic.