Image Master 2000 Review Digital pictures are so easy to make; forget about film and take them with a digital camera, download them from online or use a scanner to put regular images into your pc. Very easy to deal with until you want to view a whole lot of them. What's worse is when you give a bunch to someone and they don't have any programs to look at them with. Now you can view your files by making slideshows that: - have music - display some images longer than others - have from 1 to 102 transition effects - displays single or multiple images at once and other features as well such as making thumbnails. Image Master 2000 does all this with an easy to use interface and a low registration fee. Download the trial version and follow along with the examples. Installation This section sounds complicated but it isn't. The total time to do this is about three minutes and a takes a few mouse clicks. I only include it because the installation process warns you that it's going to upgrade files. To some, this is a sure cause of panic and results in a quick click on the "cancel" button. Don't worry. Click yes to upgrading the files and download the ones it tells you to. After rebooting your PC, you'll have to manually restart the installation procedure. If you're using Windows XP and can't hear the genie after installing the program, check out the section on XP below. If you don't need an explanation, skip the rest of this section and get on with the examples. If you're curious, Image Master 2000 uses Microsoft Agent characters and it's looking to see if you have the proper and most up to date drivers. If you've used SpeakMail2000 or WebSpeak, you know which drivers it wants. If not, here's a quick run down: MS Agent is installed in the operating system of Windows XP, 2000 and ME. Users of Windows 95,98,and NT will have to download the drivers. XP users must download and install the following two drivers: 1) SAPI 4.0 2) L&H Speech Engine Microsoft Agent uses SAPI 4.0 to provide speech services but Windows XP comes with SAPI 5.0 which is not backward compatible. You can, however, have both SAPI 4.0 and 5.0 on your PC at the same time but you'll need the L&H speech engine to sort them out. The addition of SAPI 4.0 and the L&H Speech Engine causes no problems at all with the operation of SAPI 5.0. None of these drivers will harm your PC. Create a Slideshow Creating a slide show takes less than five minutes. Here is the Image Master 2000 interface: 1) Click on the select pictures Icon this opens up a pop up window of all available slide shows. 2)Select a slide show - since you haven't made any yet, they will all be unnamed and empty. Double click on the first one. 3) This brings up the select pictures page: Find the location of your images in the window on the left and double click on the folder. 4) The available images will appear in the center window. A view of them will appear in the upper left window when you click on them. Select the ones you want by clicking on them. multiple files can be selected using SHIFT - left click for a sequence of images or CTRL - leftclick for images that aren't in sequential order. The demo version is limited to five images. Click the "add" button underneath. 5) The added images appear in the window on the lower right. The buttons underneath do the following: Clone: Places a duplicate of the selected image in the slide show. Remove File/Remove All: Remove some or all of the images in a slide show Print List: Prints a list of images in your slide show Exit: Closes the picture selection windows without saving the slide show Thumbnails: Opens thumbnail page - more on this later. Save and Exit: saves the slide show and exits the screen 6) The next window is where you pick a name for your slide show. Type it in the text box; I chose the imaginitive name "first slide show". Click Ok and you're back to the main screen. Your slide show has been created. View the Slide Show There are three ways to view your slide show: One image at a time Overlay mode - images appear randomly and remain on the screen as new images are placed on top of them. Collage - four images at once on the screen. Each of these modes can be accessed through the following buttons. Clicking on the single image icon brings up the following screen: The left side of the window stays the same for all three modes of viewing. You select the time you want the image to remain visible and if you want images to appear in random order or not. The right side of the screen you can select the size of the image to be displayed, set the transition speed, add a frame to the image or go to the thumbnail page. The thumbnail page is covered later. Selecting the overlay mode changes the right side of the screen to the following: This has many of the same options but it allows you to set the background color. This is the right half of the collage screen: This is also similar to the other screens but it allows you to maintain the aspect ration of your images. If this isn't done, images may look warped because they have been stretched to fill their section of the screen. Try viewing your slide show with various options and decide which is best for you. Sorting Pictures with Thumbnails The thumbnails button is in the "Pictures to show" section of the select pictures window or in each of the view mode panels shown above. See previous two sections if you need help finding its exact location. Clicking this button opens the only full screen window of the program. If this is the first time using this feature, there obviously won't be any thumbnails so the following box will appear: Clicking the green light will start the thumb creation along with some amusing sound effects. The thumbnails will appear like this: Using the commands on the menu bar, you can rearrange the order of the pictures, delete them from the list, or view the image at its full size. There is also an option to customize the slide show by each picture. This will be covered in the next section. Extra Effects Now that you have a basic slide show, it's time to add some special effects. TEXT Clicking this icon brings up the picture text panel. Put messages on your images such as comments or the names of people and places. The text will be visible when you play the slideshow. You can control the font size and color as well as the frame surrounding the text. You also have the choice of not having a frame or making the frame transparent. MUSIC To add music to a slide show, you must create a music library first. Click this to open up the music library panel. Select the folder on your PC where you keep your .wav files in the left part of the panel and they will be listed in the center panel. Select the .wav files you wish to use on the slide show and click the add button. The .wav files that will play during the slide show will be displayed in the right panel. Click the "save and exit" button and your slide show will now play music. TRANSITION EFFECTS Transition effects really have to be seen to be appreciated. Click on this icon to open the menu and try some of them. With 102 to choose from, you'll probably find some you like. CUSTOM SLIDE SHOW BY PICTURE This allows you to add all of the above effects to individual pictures instead of the entire groups of pictures. That means you can: - assign a .wav file to each picture such as a spoken description of the picture or a sound effect. - assign a transition effect to certain pictures for emphasis. - assign a different display time for each image Access the custom screen by going to the thumbnail page by using the button on any of the view mode panels and clicking on the menu icon that looks like a pc with tools around it. The icon is the the third from the right in the above image. Clicking the icon brings up this window. The image you will be adding custom effects to is pictured in the thumbnail at the top of the window. Beneath that are the transition effects which can be listed by clicking on the "Open List" button. The Picture display time is controlled by the slider at the bottom. Follow this procedure to use a different .wav file for each picture: 1) You can create a voice .wav file using the sound recorder function on Microsoft Windows. It should be in one of the accessories subfolders. 2) Copy or move the .wav files you want to use into the same folder that has the slide show images. 3) Rename each .wav file to match the name of the picture it goes with. For instance, the .wav file that goes with the image beach.jpg must be named beach.wav. 4)Click on the "Open Wave Options" button below the display slider in the custom window and this panel will open to the right. This allows you to display the image until the .wav file stops. The copy/paste settings buttons allow you to copy settings of one image to another. The custom features really allows you to put a personal touch on your slide show. Share Pictures - Bagger Function Now that you've created, viewed, and customized your slide show, you probably want to share it with everyone. Image Master 2000 has the perfect way to do that with the bagger function. Click this icon to open the bagger page. The bagger menu is very simple to use. Just click the top two boxes. Bagger will then display information in the bottom five boxes such as how many files your slide show needs and how much memory it uses. The bagger function then copies all of the files you need for your slide show into one file which you can write to a CD to share with your friends. When writing to a cd or e-mailing a slide show, you may want to put all of the files in a single zip file. Conventional zip programs will only reduce jpg files about 3% and aren't much help. Super Compressor, however, will reduce the size of jpg files anywhere from 40% to over 80% depending on the file and won't reduce image quality. For my example, I made a fileshow with five large images and bagged it to a folder which took 708KB of memory. The standard zip program only reduced this to 706KB; not much memory saved there. Super Compressor reduced the slide show size to 385KB making it easier to store and much faster to e-mail. The slide show is all bagged but it will not run by itself; other people will need to install at least the demo version of Image Master 2000. The demo will work fine if you only intend on viewing and not creating bagged files since the five image limit is only on the creating side. There is no size limit for viewing bagged slide shows. To make things easier on those receiving your slide shows, you may want to burn a copy on the Image Master Install program on the CD you send them. If memory space is an issue or they want more information, just send them a link to this page. Screen Saver Image Master 2000 can be set as your PC screen saver by following these steps: 1) Image Master 2000 must be started at least once by using the start button then selecting it from the all programs list. 2) In your display properties window under screen savers, Image Master 2000 will now appear as a choice. 3) Image Master 2000 will now show the last selected slide show as a screen saver. Select the key icon, shown below, if you want to password protect your PC while the screen saver is on; select the eyes icon, also shown below, if you want your PC to go into energy saving mode after the screensaver has played for awhile. If you use digital images and pictures, be sure to check the digital picture page for more helpful programs. Genie Using the genie command on the menu bar, you can bring up Genie, which is a Microsoft Agent character capable of moving around and talking to you. Genie's main function is to tell you tips occasionally and to go through a basic tutorial. While the tutorial is useful and informative, you must have patience when using it. If you perform a task such as "click save and exit" too soon, Genie acts like you haven't done it yet. Since there's no back button for the tutorial, Genie keeps nagging you to perform the task that's been done. The only way to stop it is to either shut off Image Master 2000 and restart the tutorial or redo all of the previous steps of the tutorial so you can redo the one that Genie is asking for. If you use the second option, the tutorial will continue. You can also have Genie read the message that's on your slide show. It quickly becomes tiresome since he won't read individual picture text but only the message that shows up on ALL of the pictures. It is, however, a good effect for the first few images and can be shut off at any time by right clicking on Genie and selecting hide. Conclusion and Registration A great way to view your pictures; a great way to share your pictures; Image Master 2000 offers lots of features at a low price. The demo version is limited to only five images and will demonstrate how the program works. If the program meets your needs and you decide to register it, use the "Register" button shown when the program first starts. The screen that follows gives you the choice of going to the online store or using the in program registration wizard by clicking the "next" button. I've found the registration wizard is faster and easier so click "next" to proceed. You can download the trial version by clicking on the button below. I hope you find the program useful and would like to hear your comments at products@sharewaregenie.com If you use digital images and pictures, be sure to check the digital picture page for more helpful programs. - The Genie - News || Reviews || Utilities || Home/Office || Web Tools || Web Utils || Graphics || Security || Games || Other Categories || Program List || FAQ || Forum || About Us || Contact Us || Home Strategy Games || Action Games || Puzzle Games || Card Games ||