This is an excellent how-to book about not just Proshow products, but also making rich-media shows. The author is the founder of Proshow, which has developed the Photoshop equivalent of slide-show software.
I have been a Producer user from the days the software required a key you inserted into the USB drive to validate your copy and they charged $500 for the program. Then they realized it wasn't selling well, and they dropped the price to $250 and gave those suckers who paid $500 no relief in upgrading. Buying Proshow is like subscribing to a magazine, it will cost you $89 to renew every year. Unfortunately, the software remains fairly limited and buggy on the menu-creation side, and you really need a program like Encore and DVD Architect, the later I can't recommend because it has some serious support and compatibility issues.
But, if you want to create slide shows and have a full slate of tools and effects available, and aren't afraid to drop $500 or more on the program and then the style packs and other goodies sold separately, Producer is the way to go.
This book addresses both the the Producer and Pro Show Gold products. It does a good job of showing work arounds if you have only the consumer version, but it will leave you wanting to buy the Producer product. It covers a lot of the tricks you see people using in shows at the Proshow sharing site, which is a great resource for inspiration and both bad and good shows. Indeed, one of the best parts of the book is at the very back, where "expert users" share their techniques and tips. From the cover, you'd expect to hear a lot more of their voices throughout the book, but rather their wisdom is relegated to a few pages at the very end.
One of the things that bothered me about this book is the author's lack of understanding about the history of slide shows. To read this book, you'd get the impression he invented the whole rich-media concept and the techniques used to bring still images to life. Not so. For many years, starting around the 1950s, until the demise of Arion in the early 00s, professional slide shows used techniques like masking, dissolves and even animation. These shows, often called multi-image slide productions, often included 16mm film clips, as well. The shows used two or more projectors to create complex dissolve, masking and animation sequences. As the number of projectors grew -- 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 and even more -- so did impact of the shows. The investment was huge, and the shows often spread over screens 30 to 60 feet wide.
Speaking of which, one of the experts in the book refers to using a 30-foot LCD at or near the guestbook of weddings, on which the slide shows are run! Wow! I'm guessing it's 30-inch, just as, Paul Schmidt's comment that slide trays could hold up to 130 slides is off the mark. Kodak's top tray capacity was 140, but never used in professional shows because they were prone to jamming. 80 was top capacity.
I'm nitpicking here, however. The book is good at what it sets out to do, and is much needed as the Proshow training materials direct from the software manufacturer are pretty expensive. This book will give you lots of good ideas. Just don't put too much stock in his history of the slide show development, however. The book suffers from these little typos and lack of thorough research that drive me, a newspaper editor, up a wall. It seems like the world is in such a rush to get products to market and return the investment little effort is put into proofing. This has been the history of the Proshow software, as well.
I would definitely recommend this book over the other Proshow book, which was outdated when it was released because, to make their annual fee off the software, Photodex keeps changing the product.
Get more detail about Secrets of Proshow Experts: The Official Guide to Creating Your Best Slide Shows with ProShow Gold and Producer.
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