Best Free Slideshow Software

Many people enjoy taking photos. Sadly, all those pictures end up forgotten on who knows what computer or external storage device. Have you ever thought about doing cool things, like slideshows and animations with the photos you have been making through time? If you were concerned about the increased costs that good quality programs specialized in photo editing require, you can give up on such worries right now. Because PhotoStage Slideshow is available and free for download, on the internet. So give it a chance.



Advantages

Before getting into specific details, you might want to know what reviewers and customers from all over the world had to say about this software. And we should start with the positive aspects, since they are considerably numerous in comparison with the negative ones.

First of all, PhotoStage is incredibly friendly with users, being easy to work with. There is an impressive and wide range of options regarding photo adjustments, adding effects, combining photos and adding audio support. And last but not least, the slideshows you produce can be saved in numerous formats.

If you are having troubles with learning how to use it, though I do not think it will be the case, the Help menu is more than generous with explanations.

Flaws

Yeah, nothing is perfect and nor this popular software is. Nevertheless, you will soon discover that the few drawbacks that have been reported are about aspects we can live and work without. Even though the processing options are so many, there are just three effects for making transitions, so we might have enjoyed a little variety on this chapter. Depending on the number of photos you are using, it might take some time to compile the slideshow. From over 15 files, you should take a coffee break.

And that would be all with the unpleasant features.

Once you decide to try PhotoStage, you will immediately appreciate the following characteristics: you can flip, crop or rotate pictures in no time; you have a sensitive tune brightness, vivid colors and a pleasant saturation; you can add some text captions for specific slides; all the changes can be previewed in real time; adding music tracks to the presentations will be piece of cake; and you can even record or import some pre – recorded narrations to include in the slideshow.

Any file can be saved as a YouTube file, but also with formats compatible with an iPod, 3GP phone or PSP. Were you dreaming about exporting a slideshow as a full HD file? Stop dreaming and make it come true, because now you can do that.

Formats and systems

Regarding the formats you use for input files, there are many that can be supported: jpg, bmp, jpeg, gif, tif and tiff, pcs, wmf, exif and a few others for images; mp3, raw, wma, wav, mpga, flac, mid and so far for audio files; and mp4, avi, divX, mpeg, Xvid, mov, vob, wmw  and many others for video files.

As for the output formats, you can export files to burn them on discs like CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, HD-DVD; you can simply turn them into various video files like the ones above mentioned for the input category; and you can directly upload them on the popular YouTube, as I have already suggested.

Probably the best part is that you can work with this software without any problems at all on any Windows operating system, no matter if it is XP, 7 or Vista.

Other options

We were talking about the best free software specialized in making slideshows. I am not saying that PhotoStage is the best you can get, but it is definitely one of the most popular ones. However, if you want to try something else, also for free, check the following suggestions: Microsoft Photo Story, PhotoDVD, MySlideShow or Photozig.