FotoMagico 5–The Best Slideshow Software Now in 4k

FotoMagico 5 makes creating advanced slideshows super easy

Back in 2013 when Boinx software asked me to take a look at FotoMagico, I was getting tons of requests to do reviews, but I only had the bandwidth to write about the best of the best products. After taking a quick look at FotoMagico 4, I was very impressed and gave a very favorable review.

Fast forward to 2016, and it was me reaching out to them as I was excited about the release of FotoMagico 5 which features 4k output plus lots of great user interface enhancements (see the press release below for full details).

This past weekend when I did my review, I found myself loving this newest version much more than its predecessor as it felt more like the ScreenFlow and Camtasia video editing tools that I am more comfortable using. What’s more, I was able to quickly create a 4k video with my images in less than 15 minutes which I repeated for this video tutorial here:

Click here to view the tutorial on YouTube

To save me even more time, I could upload my video directly to YouTube in 4k and the whole upload process only took 3 minutes on my 2015 MacBook Pro:

Upload your videos to YouTube in 4k

With impressive intro video, lots of free music, and rolling credits – I had a video that was impressive to view on any resolution display. Here’s the final output which looked wonderful on my NEC PA322UHD 4k display: 

Click here to see on YouTube and be sure to view full screen

More info from the Press Release

Boinx Software has just announced a new version of its premier slideshow creation tool, FotoMagico 5. This updated software program brings a combination of brand new editing tools and advancements to pre-existing features. Among many enhancements, FotoMagico 5 now features a slideshow interface with pre-built stories called “Snippets,” Audio Envelopes and Fades to control audio levels, an Audio Marker Assistant to provide more precise sound editing capabilities, improved text editing and placeholders, and much more.

“FotoMagico is made by photographers for photographers,” states Oliver Breidenbach, CEO, Boinx Software. “This is why it puts the needs of photographers front and center. It’s easy to learn, as photographers want to spend their time taking photos - not learning a slide show app. The Snippets feature gets you magical results more quickly than ever. FotoMagico 5 slideshows look brilliant on 4K TVs as well as on YouTube. That’s why thousands of photographers rely on FotoMagico to tell their stories.”

FotoMagico 5 Updates Include:

• New “Snippets” feature allow users to insert their own photo and video content into these pre-built stories to create beautiful slideshows; FotoMagico pros can create their own Snippets to streamline the production of slideshows, perfect for those working with clients
• New Dark User Interface, designed for users of all skill levels, to make photos and videos stand out even more against a more modern backdrop
• Music Snippets come with free CC licensed music by Josh Woodward and Kevin MacLeod to set the mood; pre-loaded with perfectly timed audio markers means your story is synchronized with the matching music, while an attribution slide keeps users out of copyright troubles
• Animation Assistant designed to automatically make your slideshow move, while accounting for a variety of photo aspect ratios like portrait and panorama, movie and text properties
• New Audio Marker Assistant (Pro only) offers more precise control over timing than ever before, with perfectly synchronized music and slides creating the right dramatic effect
• New Audio Volume Envelopes and Fades (Pro only), the most requested feature, provides audio level controls that enable users to make the music softer when one intends to speak if presenting the slideshow, or to let the video audio take center stage
• Improved Text Editing and Text Placeholders (Pro only) for the most intuitive way to edit and format titles yet

Additional new features available only in FotoMagico 5 Pro include the timeline view; record narration; access to Lightroom and Aperture libraries; teleprompter support; chapter support; masks, borders and color correction; and additional sharing options, such as the Standalone Player, ProRes video, and custom video.

Conclusion

The best way to create slideshows for your images just got way better with this release. It’s a no brainer upgrade for existing users, and a great addition to any photographer’s software workflow. It’s fast, easy to use, and the results are extremely professional looking at up to 4k resolution!

It should be noted at this time this product is for Apple OS X only and there are no known plans to offer a Windows version any time soon.

Where To Order

CLICK HERE to order or click here to learn more.

Other articles you may enjoy

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy these:

• Ron’s Recommendations 
• Aurora HDR – Fantastic HDR software for the Mac
• NEC PA322UHD 4k Display Review
• More Free Photo Editing Software
• Nik Collection by Google is now FREE
• Topaz Texture Effects Review
• Imagenomic Portraiture Review

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

Professional Photography Web Hosting Roundup: SiteWelder Review

 

**** WARNING ****  **** WARNING ****  **** WARNING ****  **** WARNING ****

THIS ARTICLE HAS BECOME TOO OLD AND OUTDATED. I now use Zenfolio exclusively for my personal portfolio and http://ronmartinsen.com now only points to my Zenfolio site. Click here to read my Zenfolio review and learn why I feel it’s the best service available now.

**** WARNING **** **** WARNING **** **** WARNING **** **** WARNING ****

 

Introduction

SiteWelder offers a rich set of features, and unlike others in this series it welcomes photographers from other services so it can convert your existing website to SiteWelder.

During my test period, I found Mason Miller (Chief Technical Officer & managing partner) willing to bend over backwards to help me and his other customers. In fact, it was one of his customers that insisted I include SiteWelder in this series and that I interact with Mason. It’s design director and former photographer, Alan Dorow, was more hands off during my evaluation period but apparently was a driving force behind some of the great design templates offered by this service.

Site Tour

Visit http://ronmartphoto.com or view the the site walkthrough to see just what SiteWelder offers for this $450/yr (plus $250 setup fee) service. You can play with the shopping cart feature by clicking on the Purchase Info button in the People gallery shown above, and be sure to use the slideshow link as well.

What I liked about SiteWelder is that it doesn’t have the annoying auto-scrolling thumbnails, but rather a simple scrollbar (which can feature custom colors upon request to SW support at no charge). This site was simple, but effective. In addition, it offers a Client Access area (Gallery Code: Private) as shown below:

It doesn’t appear to offer liveBook’s support for the auto generation of PDF images for clients (which some may not want anyway), nor was their an obvious way to add files for download from the site. Lastly, I saw no existing mechanism in its user interface for adding video as offered by liveBooks and Smugmug. While I don’t think these are mainstream features right now, it’s something to consider in the future especially if you are a Canon 5D Mark II or Nikon D90 shooter delivering video to your customers.

Behind the Scenes: Administering your site

SiteWelder’s sites are fairly easy to maintain. It’s actually very similar to FolioSnap, only better. View the behind the scenes images to see how to configure the site. I found everything to be fairly straightforward and it worked flawlessly. I also never experienced any performance issues or problems that I couldn’t overcome either myself or with a little assistance from the ever willing to please Mason Miller.

SiteWelder’s behind the scenes management isn’t as elegant or as feature rich as liveBooks in some ways (i.e., shopping cart), but it did offer the ability to do custom pages not possible with liveBooks (well, you can get it for a fee). In addition, it doesn’t take the path of FolioSnap by offering just one template in a bunch of different colors, but rather it offers a selection of 20 unique templates with numerous optional color themes for each one.

It’s shopping cart is a bit crude and insufficient compared to the stellar offerings by liveBooks and Smugmug, but again it was still superior to the FolioSnap offering.

HTML/CSS Customization

SiteWelder offers an excellent Page Editor for customizations to your info pages and the home page, but I didn’t see anything that allowed me to customize the site template or anything else. I did observe that the SiteWelder support staff is happy to make these changes (some for a fee, but not always), so it’s obvious they are willing to work with you to build a unique experience (as seen at http://www.catdogphotography.com).

iPhone Support

As of the time of this writing the SiteWelder test site I built using its Reston template was unusable on the iPhone, but that might be addressed by the time you read this article. Mason Miller stated that:

We are actively working on an iPhone interface. Ultimately we are going to let users pick from multiple desktop and iPhone interfaces. We will have then iPhone interface available to all users this week.

I encourage you to check the test site using your iPhone to see how it works. From the early preview I did, it seems like it should be similar to Smugmug’s and quite good.

Key Customers

Famous photographer Gary Parker (#9 on my favorite photographers list), hosts both his commercial photography site and his Cats & Dogs site as well as plenty others like Mark Mann, Brian Smith, Paula Lerner and more. They also have an impressive collection of testimonials from happy customers.

Search Engine Performance

While not as impressive as liveBooks, its clear that this service is starting to get serious about Search Engine Optimizations (SEO). Here’s a sample of search wins from SiteWelder customers: 

Google Search Topic	URL of SiteWelder Customer
Charlotte Architectural Photography	http://www.ciarlante.com
Chicago Architectural Photography	http://www.crewsphotography.com
Seattle Editorial Photographer	http://www.frishphoto.com
Miami Advertising Photographer	http://www.dgmfoto.com http://www.briansmithphoto.com http://www.briansmithmiami.com
Celebrity Photographer	http://www.briansmithphoto.com
Dallas Photographer	http://www.markoristano-photographer.com
Cat and Dog Photography	http://www.catdogphotography.com
Dwarfism Photography	http://www.garyparker.com

After about 5+ weeks a query for “Ron Martinsen Photography” on Google resulted in my SiteWelder site, http://ronmartphoto.com, showing up on the first page results. 

Cost

With a $250 setup fee and then $450 annually, the startup cost for SiteWelder is similar to the basic account for liveBooks, but you get more for your money. However, the maintenance cost of SiteWelder means that in two years you could easily spend more for SiteWelder than you do for liveBooks. However, if you like to keep your site fresh and make big changes, then liveBooks cost will run up quickly making SiteWelder the cheaper option. It’s prices are also are on par with FolioSnap’s FolioPro/FolioSuite offerings when you compare the services offered.

Pros / Cons

What I love about SiteWelder is:

1. Fantastic customer support – Simply put, Mason rocks. I got the impression that no request would be dismissed and that simple things that might cost $195 on liveBooks would simply be done for free or for a modest fee.
2. Good selection of templates – 20 unique templates with roughly 20 well designed themes for each plus the ability to do rich custom intro and info pages means that it is quite possible to build a very unique experience on SiteWelder.
3. HTML Based – Unlike liveBooks, SiteWelder seems to be primarily HTML based. There does appear to be some flash for the slideshows, but otherwise this is a flash-free site.
4. Fast, Easy to Use, and Functional Design – Simply put, this site just works well. It’s clean, fast and looks great in my opinion. What’s more, its design is flexible enough that you can make a template change to your site and have a fresh new experience as often as you like.
5. Everything’s included – Free domain name registration, email, slideshows, paypal, and lots of storage space.

Areas for SiteWelder improvement:

1. No iPhone support – This is something that is being actively addressed, so hopefully by the time you read this article it will no longer apply.
2. Annual fee is rather steep – While I think the setup fee is fair, especially given their great support, the annual cost can quickly make the total cost of ownership (TCO) over two years to be greater than liveBooks, without the Search Engine Optimization performance that liveBooks boasts. However, SiteWelder doesn’t really nickel and dime you for every little change, so the real TCO might still favor SiteWelder. In addition, you get tons storage space, something that would cost you $3200 with liveBooks. Lastly, SiteWelder offers half off for a second site which is a great value for those catering two different markets / client bases.
3. External Site Linking isn’t Intuitive – If there’s one thing FolioSnap does very well, is make it easy to add nice links to external sites. However, the Build Informational Pages section doesn’t make this process simple or intuitive. What’s more, it doesn’t allow for easy reordering so if you make an ordering mistake you going to have to contact support or do some heavy lifting yourself.

Conclusion

I consider SiteWelder to be a viable alternative to liveBooks and superior to FolioSnap. While it is similar to FolioSnap in that it offers templates, SiteWelder offers a much larger selection and is willing to work with its customers to come up with a customized experience that results in a unique web presence. It’s shopping cart isn’t as robust as Smugmug or liveBooks, but this is a company that I’m convinced will listen to its customers and respond to their needs. Overall I have no issues with recommending this photography web hosting service provider.

Special Offer

SiteWelder has been kind enough to offer my blog readers a discount of $75 off your setup fee when you use the special code RMART when signing up for the demo. This offer expires on July 14th, so start your free trial today!

Other articles in this series:

1. Professional Web Hosting Roundup: Intro
2. liveBooks Review
3. FolioSnap Review
4. SiteWelder Review
5. Smugmug Review
6. Conclusion - pending

Photography websites and professional digital photo web sites service and custom photographer websites designs and templates, affordable and cost-effective professional photographer websites, portfolio websites by SiteWelder, with web site creation tools for wedding photographers, illustrators, artists, designers, merchants and image-based businesses. Flash websites, Flash photography website, Flash photographer website designs, wedding photography web site, wedding photographer web sites Websites for photographers, professional photography websites, artist websites, wedding photography web sites, digital photographer web site, photography template websites, professional wedding photography websites template

Where should I display my pictures online?

 

Check out my review of the ALL NEW Smugmug at http://www.ronmartblog.com/2013/07/the-all-new-smugmug-has-arrived.html.

***************************************************************************************************************

The following article article applies to the older version of Smugmug that no longer exists. All of these features are still in the new version but it has been radically improved.

***************************************************************************************************************

 

So you've read How do I manage and edit all of my photos? and you've got your photos looking their best after reading Scott Kelby's 7 Point System for Photoshop CS3, so now you are ready to share them with the world (or at least your Mom). Now what?

Choices, choices, choices

When I started this article, I thought I would list out some of the bigger name photo sharing places like Shutterfly, Picasa, PhotoBucket, Flickr, etc... and talk a little bit about each one. However, as I started looking through emails from friends and the web, I discovered there are TONS of sites out there! The problem is that most of them suck.

Sure, you can find free places to put photos on the web - that's no problem, because there's tons of sites willing to give you a few gigabytes to store pictures, but when sharing with friends and family you usually want more than that. You want the ability for them to see thumbnails of a photo album, sideshows, larger versions of your masterpiece, and you want them to be able to order their favorite pictures. What's more, you want to be able to add your own look and feel so that you don't have a site that looks like everything else out there. In short, you want more than a hard drive in the sky, or some pathetic low-res picture viewer.

Hello Smugmug

I've tried a bunch of services, and in fact still have photos on flickr, photobucket, photosig.com, and shutterfly. However, none of those services gives me all of the features I want PLUS makes it brain-dead easy to upload my photos (okay, well flickr does rock for that one). Here's some of the things I get with Smugmug, that I honestly can't live without anymore:

• Unlimited storage
• No ads or spam
• EXIF data - (this is huge for a geek like me)
• Password enabled galleries for privacy
• Custom themes
• Photo email
• Numerous photo sizes available instantly
• iPhone support
• I can buy and sell professional prints & gifts at a very reasonable price, with outstanding quality (WAY better than Shutterfly)
• Post photos in blogs & forums
• Basic photo editing tools for things like last minute crops
• USER CONTROLLED download high-res photos or originals
• Organize via slick drag and drop
• Dedicated human readable URL (i.e., http://ronmart.smugmug.com)
• Photo traffic stats
• Support for comments and rating of photos
• Photo communities
• Geotagging with display on Google Maps
• Can order backup DVDs of uploaded photos
• and more

Sure, some of these features can be found on other services, but so far Smugmug is the only one that I know of that has everything I'm looking for - which is why I love it so much!

You get what you pay for (and it's easy for Mom)

Okay, I know what you are thinking. But, hey wait a minute. With all of these free services out there, why on Earth would I pay for a service?

I understand you my friend, because I was the same way. I resisted Smugmug initially, and even built my own web site to host my photos (what a headache that was!). However, I kept lusting after these nice photo galleries I was seeing from friends, and some of the customized galleries I saw just blew my mind. Frustrated by the poor experience my dear Mom was having with my other sites, and the hassle of slow uploads, I decided take up Smugmug on its offer of a free trial. After all, I had nothing to lose, and I could finally see just what it was like to use Smugmug versus my previous favorites Flickr and Shutterfly.

WOW, the first thing I noticed was how easy and fast it was to upload photos. Sure, Flickr and Shutterfly are pretty good at this too, but the speed sure felt faster to me on Smugmug. However, the best part was that I now had a site that allowed me to upload, tag, and store photos in easily (or protected) galleries like Flickr, PLUS the ability to have Mom place orders for prints with no hassle using the best photo shopping cart I've seen on the web.

After using the site for 14 days, I decided to give it a try and haven't looked back since. It's the best thing I ever did because it allows me to focus on other parts of my photography, and presentation is now just a simple drag and drop from my hard disk to the web browser. No hassle, and great results.

Show me da money

While I think Smugmug's basic account is great for most people, what I really love is the pro account that allows me to sell my pictures with custom pricing. This is great because I now have an eStore for my photos where I'm in control of the prices (sorry Mom, no discount coupons until 2009). It also allows me to customize the site so that it can have its own domain name and look like a stand-alone web site, yet I can still take advantage of the rich Smugmug API to avoid having to re-invent the wheel.

Now there's even more goodness- support for video for Power and Pro users. I don't have any video yet, but when I get my Canon 5D Mark II, you can bet I will!

Great Customer Support

The one thing I REALLY like about Smugmug is their fantastic customer support, and their overall commitment to customer satisfaction. Now really, how many sites do you know that have the CEO blog about the good, the bad, and the ugly of their company?

There's lots of written support too! There's a wiki for common questions, an excellent help system, special topics for pros, a non-nonsense guarantee for great prints, a great forum for advanced topics and an API for the ultimate customization.

And if all else fails, you can always contact them and get a response from a REAL human being who knows what they are talking about and isn't just pasting boilerplate responses or reading from a script.

Okay, I'm convinced - Special Offer for Blog Readers (Coupon Code: SmugRon)

Well hopefully I've convinced you to AT LEAST try out the free trial, but should you decide to join then I've worked out a deal with Smugmug to give you 20% off your first year membership when you use the coupon code SmugRon. I know it's not a huge discount, but hey it beats full price right?

Be sure to visit my Smugmug Pro gallery at http://ronmartinsen.com or my personal gallery at http://ronmart.smugmug.com to see what smugmug is really like!