Articles Slide Show:
1) Library
of Congress 85
2) S.F. Examiner MacQuality 85
3) MACazine 85
5) MacGuide 87
Slide
Show
Magician
A Review
by NEALE McGOLDRICK
Slide Show Magician is a simple but valuable addition to Macintosh software.
For a price hardly more than that of a clip art disk this program enables
you to make slide shows out of any combination of images. This excellent program
adds to the versatility of MacPaint and should have broad applications in
business and education in addition to offering a new version of family "home
movies." Thanks to the portability of the Macintosh. Slide Show Magician
will enable sales personnel to use the Mac as a tabletop slideshow for presentations
which can then be followed with more detailed analysis on using the traditional
business software. In the classroom students and teachers can prepare programs
about maps, scientific demonstrations present creative writing assignments
etc. At home the Slide Show Magician is likely to provide entertainment in
the tradition of the puppet show as well as a new setting for the family collection
favorite MacPaint drawings.
Particularly useful for kids who want to put their images together for there
friends.
CREATING A SHOW
Working with the Slide Show Magician Is as simple as working with
MacPaint. All of the commands appear on the screen along with sufficient
help screens to make the thirteen-page owner's manual almost unnecessary.
Once the graphics are prepared it will probably take you less than an hour
to put together the sequence add the special effects and be ready for a presentation.
Modifications to the program (removing or adding images. changing effects,
etc.) can be done at any time and the Save As feature facilitates making several
different versions of a show without having to start over from scratch.
To create a program you begin by assembling the images on a MacPaint disk.
Graphics from MacWrite, Multiplan and other programs can be used with the
Screen Dump command (Command. Shift. 3). Once the images are complete, they
need to be assembled onto one disk for the preparation of the show. The features
available for working on a program are excellent. They include adding or deleting
images, changing the order of images, running a demo version of the show reviewing
each individual image in "full size" (Figure
2).
Slide Show Magician uses the whole screen. Thus graphics created in MacPaint
can be extended beyond the active window or conveniently framed. Using the
Save As feature while working in MacPaint enables you to create a series of
slides in perfect registration.
The movement from one slide to another can be done with an array of cinematic
techniques including dissolves, a wide variety of wipes, iris in and out,
and some unusual effects like "checkerboard" and "Venetian
blinds." The speed of the wipe can be set from slow to fast and the duration
of each individual slide can be set in a range from two seconds to fifteen
minutes (Figure
3).
Using Slide Show Magician's
text editing feature several lines of text can be added to any slide appearing
either as a block or word by word. The text can be placed anywhere on the
screen and you can even add a subliminal message of up to thirty characters
(Figure
4).
Although a Slide Show Magician program is set to be run automatically you
have the option of inserting control commands enabling the viewer to advance,
back up, or Jump particular slides as well as to quit the program. These "buttons"
can be created in a variety of sizes and placed anywhere on the screen. You
can even decide to make the buttons invisible on the screen but accessible
to anyone who knows the program (Figure
5). You can also print out information about the slide show in order to
do some of the planning on paper (Figure
6). For long shows having a "Print Catalogue" (from MacPaint)
of the images may also be useful in planning. A variety of cursors enable
a viewer to draw on the screen with a thin pencil or a thicker line (like
the paintbrush) but these additions do not affect the original show (Figure
7).
THE SIZE OF THE SHOW
Theoretically the Slide Show Magician can handle an infinite number of "slides"
chained in files of fifty. However for practical purposes you are limited
by disk space. The size of the program depends on the complexity of the individual
images. As a rule of thumb, a show which must be contained on one disk is
limited to abouttwenty slides. (Slides can be repeated without affecting this
total.)
Figure 2 SCREEN DUMPS OF EDIT
The edit screen offers a reduced image of each image in the slide show as
well as the title and location of the slide in the sequence
Figure 3 SPECIAL EFFECTS
Special effects determines when each new slide will appear on the screen.
Slide Show Magician will not work at the speed of animation, but at two seconds
between slides it is possible to create a smooth transition through a series
of stages, like the growth of a chart. Experimentation is the best way to
determine how different effects look at different speeds.
CONTINUE...
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