slide-shows
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Slidely Show lets you combine media to make nice video slideshows
Among slideshow creation apps for iOS, Slidely Show is a good one, allowing you to make a slideshow movie presentation without making almost any adjustments. It's completely automatic, allowing you only to choose the music, and then you can watch the show be assembled on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. Photos can come from your iOS device, Facebook, Instagram or Dropbox. Select some music you already have stored on your device, and the app assembles the slideshow. You can combine video clips in with your photos, and optionally add slow or fast motion effects. Trying Slidely Show on my iPhone 6, I thought it worked surprisingly well. Transitions were in the form of crossfades, and at the end of the created movie the music faded away rather than ending abruptly as I've seen happen with some other slideshow apps. This latest version of Slidely Show also lets you create video postcards direct from your camera roll. That capability uses the extensions feature Apple added to iOS 8. Pick a photo from the collection on your phone, select Slidely Show as a destination, and then you can change themes, add more photos and choose music without ever opening the Slidely app. It's a very nice implementation that shows just how powerful extensions can be. Your slideshow movies can be shared via mail, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. You can also browse other slideshows created by others and get some good ideas, or upload yours publicly as a way of sharing your ideas. Slidely Show is very good for a quick and dirty slideshow to send off to friends or family. One glitch I noticed: a movie I created was cropped when I viewed it on my older iPad 2, so obviously the clip did not adjust to the proper resolution and screen size Slidely Show is a clever app and for free it's a must-try if you share photos frequently. It really is free; there are no irritating in-app purchases. The app is universal and requires iOS 8. It's available in several languages.
ZapVM creates visual messages on your iOS device for story telling, giving instructions, whatever you can imagine
ZapVM is a free app (with some desirable in-app purchases) that lets you create and share messages with sound, still photos, captions, stickers and freehand sketching tools. I can see ZapVM being used by PowerPoint or Keynote fans, families sharing events, for consumer reviews of places or services, vacation photos, even simple hello messages. The app does all the editing and processing right on your device, so no data link is needed until it is time to share. I tried the app and had good success. The options can be a bit daunting, so take a couple of minutes to understand all the icons. In a nutshell, here is the process: Take a photo or get one from your camera roll. Record a narration. You can swipe through up to ten images. When you are done, use the drawing tools to annotate your presentation with things like arrows, captions, freehand drawings or text and other graphic elements. When you are done, your images and annotations get rendered into a video, which you can then share. You don't have to register to use it, you can just send your 'Zaps', as they are called, directly from the app. Here's where things get a bit complicated. The free version of ZapVM allows users to create and share an unlimited number of 30-second Zap Videos with ad-based Zap Links if published on ZapVM.com and up to 25 active Zap Projects on their device. Free users may also use Zap Credits to export enhanced quality Zap Videos that are up to 90 seconds long and that include an ad-free Zap Link, if published, for three months. All users receive five free credits upon downloading the app. Zap Credit Packs with 20 credits are available via in-app purchase for 99 cents. Users may also upgrade to Zap Plus for $4.99, allowing them to store an unrestricted number of active Zap Projects on their device(s) and to create, export and share an unlimited number of enhanced-quality, 90-second Zap Videos, each of which includes an ad-free Zap Link, if published, for three months. ZapVM works well, and is a pretty unique approach to content creation on iOS. I'd like to see the pricing simplified and the ability to import short videos instead of just photos. The whole notion of credits bogs down what is a very powerful app. My two cents worth? Give me a free 'lite' version to try out, and then sell a full-featured version. ZapVM is not a universal app, and it requires iOS 7. It is optimized for the iPhone 5.
Photo Grid Collage Maker is capable and free
Photo Grid is a free (ad supported) app with lots of options for creating collages, as well as video slide shows accompanied by music. You can select the aspect ratio for the photos, and choose from more than 300 layouts. The layouts that appear depend upon how many photos you have. You can also select background colors, frames, text, and stickers. Your finished collage can be shared with the various social networks, emailed, or saved to your camera roll. I have used the app on several of my pictures, and find it straightforward. You point the app to your photo roll, select the photos you want to use, and the rest is pretty obvious, with controls along the bottom of the screen. There is also a feature that lets you create videos with photos. There's isn't a lot of flexibility there. Once your photos are selected, you can't change the order. And there are no dissolves between photos, which I think is a requirement for a nice looking slide show. The photos just cut from one to another. You can add music easily, and the app takes care of the timings and conforms the music to your slide show duration. Photo Grid works well and it is a universal app that costs nothing. It does have ads, and they can be distracting. I pressed a 'next' button on screen, and got more ads, when I thought I was advancing to the next screen of the program. Even with my caveats, Photo Grid has a wealth of features at an appealing price of free. I still like Diptic as a paid app for collage creation, but the creators of that app are getting carried away with too many in-app purchases. Photo Grid requires iOS 6 or later to run and it is optimized for the iPhone 5.
Almighty Photo is a slick photo album and editor for iOS
I originally thought Almighty Photo (US$2.99) was another me-too photo editor, but quickly saw that the app was much more than that. It's an innovative and powerful approach to photo management and editing. The app is designed to browse and organize your photo libraries. It never touches the originals, but gives you a new way to display and make sense of your photos. Almighty Photo is a great app for people who have lots of photos on their iOS devices. The app automatically sorts your photos by day, month, year, lenses or tags. Like the native photo library in iOS 7, it also separates your photos and videos. Almighty Photo can automatically put your images in frames, and create nice collages. Of course, you can control the look if you'd like. Live filters, which work on photos and videos, will apply filters without changing your originals. Photos can be auto-rotated for the best fit to your screen, and partial metadata can be displayed. The app also features slideshows, and photos can be squared for Instagram sharing. There is a built-in tutorial when you first launch Almighty Photo, but most users won't need it if they are willing to explore the app. In use, Almighty Photo is quick and intuitive. The slideshow option is very complete -- you pick your photos, an amount of time to keep each visible on the screen, a transition effect and music from your library. My only complaint? I wish the slideshows could be exported as a movie to share with others. One thing to watch out for is the "save to camera roll" function. When you select share, it's on a second page and you may not notice that you have to swipe to see more options. If Almighty Photo interests you, there is a free "lite" version, but the full version is reasonably priced and does not burden you with optional in-app purchases. I'm impressed with Almighty Photo, which brings a fresh approach to organizing and editing photos. The app requires iOS 6 or later, and is optimized for the iPhone 5. It's not a universal app, and I'd love to see an iPad-enabled version.
TUAW Review: iPhoto '09 is a pretty picture
As noted by Robert yesterday, the first boxed copies of iLife '09 reached users today. The two iLife '09 apps that have changed the most are garnering the lion's share of excitement this week. iMovie and iPhoto have some rather dramatic improvements, and I'll detail the iPhoto changes here. Before you install, please note that the iLife '09 setup will nuke your older iLife apps. You'll need your original install disc to revert. I ran a Spotlight search and those old iLife apps are nowhere to be found. If you think you might want to roll back, be sure to back up your apps and your iPhoto library beforehand. When you start up iPhoto for the first time it updates your libraries and starts an immediate search for faces in your photos. That search goes on in the background, so you can do other things with iPhoto at the same time. Here's a rundown on the new features: The most technically advanced feature is Faces. iPhoto now does some face recognition to help you automatically find people in your bushel of images. You start by identifying a face, and you enter the person's name. iPhoto will then suggest matches in your library, and you can confirm them with a click. iPhoto generates a cork board where you can see one example of each face you have identified. Double-click on that face and it displays all the other faces that match. The technology is not perfect. It didn't get all the matches right, but when it was wrong I'd have to admit the person it found had a similar face. To try and trick it, I showed it a picture of a parrot. Although there were many similar shots of the same parrot, iPhoto utterly failed to match any of them. I think Faces wants human faces (although there are examples of penguins being recognized, and Mac|Life has tested it out successfully on feline faces). Check out the gallery for some close ups of iPhoto features and controls, and read on for more notes on the updated features. %Gallery-43286%
