Ashampoo Slideshow Studio HD 4 4.0.9

Overview

How bad do you want to create stunning slideshows of pictures with you and your loved ones? You could assign this task to a professional of course, but there’s no guarantee that your money will actually give you the result you want. So, if you want to take control and actually realize what you’re imaging then there’s a pretty neat way to do that, and its name’s Slideshow Studio HD 3. With this fully-featured software you can produce wonderful slideshows by creating your own designs or using preset ones, adding background music and even recording your own voice. After all the editing you can render your work to HD video and share it with everyone.

Installation

Installing the program is simple and straightforward. Just run the installer and follow a small number of steps until the main installation process begins. Then you can sit back and wait until it’s over (it won’t take more than 1-2 minutes); then you can start using SSS HD.

The installer is 100% clean from viruses, Trojans and other kinds of malware, as well as 3^rd party advertised software.

Supported operating systems are Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8.

Interface

The program’s interface is modern and intuitive, yet easy to get familiar with. When opening SSS HD you will be prompted to select between creation of a new project or opening an existing one. Creating a new one will ask you to pick aspect ratio before letting you start editing the project.

The area in which you’ll be working in is split into 4 areas. The top left one is the image preview area in which you can view the current image and add another item on it (text, image, table, etc.). The top right area has a list of background themes, effects and sounds you can add to your project. The timeline is in the bottom left area, in which you see an overview of the project’s contents (as thumbnails) in relation to time. Finally, the bottom right area is the slideshow review screen, which lets you play the whole slideshow so far.

Pros

Creating a slideshow with SSS HD doesn’t require advanced technical knowledge, but only imagination. While there are preset themes and logos to go with your pictures in the slideshows, you can create your own ones (and also save them for future usage). The timeline gives you the ability to adjust when and for how long the items (images, sounds, effects) will be displayed in the slideshow. If you want to make your slideshow a bit richer, then apart from the background music you can also add sound effects (there are plenty of them included in the program’s library). In addition, you can record your own voice narrating or talking (or signing, I you have the guts) and add the recording to the slideshow without the use of external software.

You can apply many transition effects during the slideshow, some of which are Blocks, Bubble, Butterfly, Circular, Diamond, Fade, Fall, Slide Over, Star, Sweep, Wheel, etc. Objects which you can add/edit/rotate/mirror are text, table, image and shapes.

EXIF data is automatically read by SSS HD.

Supported output formats are Blu-ray m2ts (.m2ts), MPEG-4 AVI (.avi), MPEG-2 (.mpg), MPEG-1 (.mpg) and Windows Media Video 9 (.wmv). However, you can produce and burn the slideshow directly on a DVD and Blue-ray (HD or Full HD). If on the other hand you want to upload it on an online service, then you can use predefined settings for uploading to YouTube, Facebook or MyVideo.

Cons

Unfortunately it doesn't accept videos as input files.

Alternatives

Other software for creating slideshows are AquaSoft SlideShow (paid), Bolide Slideshow Creator (free), DVD slideshow GUI (free) and Freemake Video Converter (free). All of them have pretty much the same features, although they don’t have that many effects and themes to use (unlike Slideshow Studio HD 3).

Conclusion

What we have here is a tool that gives everyone the power to create amazing slideshows regardless of computer experience. The only disadvantage is that it doesn't support adding video files in the slideshows, but that doesn't affect the quality of the program as a whole and is a great solution for slideshow creation.