Photostage Photo Slideshow Creator/Producer brings your pictures, images and video clips to life and lets you share your favorite memories with others in an interesting and portable way through video. Photostage calls it a slideshow.

This video-editing software is so easy to use that anyone who knows how to click a mouse can do it. Even Grandpa and Grandma will have no problem creating an awesome video or slideshow with Photostage. And the best part of all this creative fun is that you don't have to spend a dime for Photostage is completely free.

Photostage Photo Slideshow Creator/Producer is a freeware offered by NCH Swift Sound Software which is a leader in business audio technology since 1993. Photostage was first introduced in April, 2007 and has been upgraded several times since then.

You can create up to 1000 photos in a slideshow, and it is fully compatible with Windows 2000 / XP / Vista. The free Photostage edition gives you all the necessary tools to create an interesting slideshow or video. It is full of effects that include:

• Zoom and fade your slides.
• Preview the effects in real time
• Customize the duration of the effects.
• Optimize digital photos and video clips by fine tuning brightness, saturation and color.
• Crop, rotate and flip photos easily.
• Add text captions, titles or subtitles to individual slides.
• Record narrations or import pre-recorded narrations.
• Add music tracks to complement your slideshow.
• Burn your slideshow to DVD and watch it in your living room on your TV.

With Photostage, you can share your slideshow or video with your family and friends and others by posting your creation on the Internet. You can also show off your latest pictures and video clips on portable devices such as PSP, iPod, iPhone, 3GP mobile phone or Pocket PC.

The biggest strenght of PhotoStage, as compared to most free video editing programs, is that it supports a hugh list of media formats and codecs. Amongst the input formats that Photostage is capable of handling are:

Image:

bmp, gif, jpg, jif, jiff, jpeg, exif, png, tif, tiff, psd, tga, pcx, jp2, wmf, ico

Audio:

wav, mp3, mp2, mpga, m4a, ogg, avi, mid, flac, aac, wma, dct, au, aiff, ogg, raw, msv, dvf, vox, cda, atrac, gsm, dss, sri, shn, dss, msv, wmv and many more.

Video:

avi, mpeg, wmv, divX, Xvid, mpeg1, mpeg2, mpeg4, mp4, mov, asf, vob, ogm, .3gp, H.264, RM and many more.

The Photostage Sldeshow Creator or Producer has a very simple interface which is easy to navigate. It consists of 4 main areas:

1. Running across the very top section is the browser window comprising the common functions for "Insert Slides", "Delete Slides", "Set Sound Track", "Build Slideshow", "Blank Slide", "Copy Slide", "Options" and "Help". And on the far right is the "Toolbox"

Clicking the "Options" button opens up a window that allows you to set 3 things:

• Default slide lenght - the duration you want the slide to be shown
• Transitions type - 3 choices to choose from: none, fade and cross-fade, and
• Narration - variation samplerate and variation channels.

The "Help" button links you to Photostage website where you will a very useful and brief outline on how to use the application.

The "Toolbox" is the link to download more free software from NCH that will make video production a breeze.

2. At the bottom section of the interface is the "Timeline" containing the "Slide or Video Track", the "Narration or Voice Track" and the "Music Track".

3. Occupying the middle left section is the main dashboard. The "Preview" screen is where you can watch and review your work while the slideshow or video is played back for you when you press the "Play" button.

Just beneath the preview screen is the main dashboard where you add effects to give your slideshow or video the professional look. These effects include:

• "Caption" to add titles (or subtitles) to your slides,
• "Narrate" to add your narration,
• "Zoom" to add panning and zooming effects,
• "Crop" to trim or resize your slides,
• "Effects" for smooth transitions between slides,
• "Lenght" to adjust the viewing duration of each slide or video,
• "Manage Color" to enhance your pictures and images, and
• 2 directional arrows to rotate your slide to the left or right.

4. The last section on the right is the "File List" of all the pictures, images and video clips that you have inserted onto the timeline.

Creating a video or slideshow with Photostage is easy and fun. Photostage is very similar to Windows PhotoStory except that the latter can only accept pictures and images whereas Photostage can edit both pictures and video clips.

Photostage provides you with all the necessary tools and effects to create professional-looking videos or slideshows that you will feel proud to share with family, friends and all the other Web users.

Tools To Assemble And Preview Your Work

• "Insert slides" button, or select File -> Insert slides from the menu.
• Multiple slides selection: select the first slide, press the Shift key and left-click on the last slide you want to select. You can also highlight all the files by pressing Ctrl + A.
• Remove a slide, select the slide or file to highlight it and click the "Delete slides" button.
• Preview and review your work at anytime by clicking the "Play" button (>) beneath the preview screen.

Effects To Optimize & Enhance Your Work

• Easy set up for slide "Length:" field or from the "Options" field in the browser.
• "Effect" list for transition effects.
• Sound narration with "Narrate" button.
• "Crop" function to resize or trim the slide.
• "Zoom" button to zoom-in or zoom-out your slide.
• "Manage Color" button for color settings and color effect.
• "Caption:" field for text
• "Blank slide" or select "Insert blank" from the timeline's context menu.
• "Swap slide" command from the slide's context menu on a timeline can be used to change the file of the slide without changing the effects and narration applied to the slide.
• "Set sound track" button or selecting "Add sound track"

File Formats To Suit Popular Devices and Programs.

• "Build slideshow" button.
• 7 destination devices for you to choose.
• Huge video format choice - One of THE best for a free video-editing program.

As a freeware, Photostage is an excellent video-editing program for creating home videos or slideshows. The things I like most about Photostage are:

• it supports a wide range of image, audio and video formats,
• it can handle both images and video clips,
• it has a very friendly and easily navigable interface,
• it has all the necessary tools and effects to create professional videos,
• it has very good instructional and technical support services, and
• it outputs high-quality videos in a wide range of formats.

The only set-back for Photostage is that you have no control over the sound or music track that you insert into your video. Maybe because NCH Software is a leader in audio technology, they want you to use their free WavePad Sound Editor to do the necessary fine-tuning before inserting your sound or music track to your video or slideshow.

You can download Photostage Photo Slideshow Creator/Producer HERE.