Roxio PhotoShow News

500 new songs, more bubbles, upload iTunes AAC files

Another great PhotoShow release today! New on PhotoShow.com for our Premium members...

1. 500 fantastic new full-length songs and 30 new music categories!
2. Upload your own AAC music files (music must be non copy-protected, no DRM)
3. New Bubbles, Banners, and Boards for your PhotoShows

Plus many other improvements, including:

• Improved DVD video quality
• Improved the preview quality of custom photo backgrounds on intros
• Smoother music fade down and fade up across video clips

New Music

You'll find the new music tracks in the Music picker. We think you'll LOVE these new tracks - they're perfect for all kinds of events and the stories of your life. In fact, there's so many songs now, we'll soon be adding better ways of searching for and finding the perfect track.

 

You'll also notice in the lower left hand corner of the picker you can now add your own iTunes music (.m4a file extension) to PhotoShows. NOTE: Only music which does not have DRM or copy protection can be selected for upload. 

There is a current known issue right now where music ripped from CD using MacOS 10.5 can fail to work when added to a show. We are investigating.

New Bubbles

Not only did we add new bubbles, but we created some fun new categories - Banners and Billboards. These are great for adding flare, humor, and fun to your shows. Check 'em out!

 

Enjoy!

The PhotoShow Team

More captions + Manage your address book

Happy New Year PhotoShow fanatics! Yesterday we released some new features on PhotoShow.com. Here's what's new:

• Dozens of new caption styles in the Captions tab (Premium members only)
• On your account page, you can now manage your email address book
• Over 50 issues addressed! ("bug fixes")

To access the new captions styles, click on the "More Captions..." button in the Captions tab. Although some of the caption styles look similar, they all have some form of text animation, so try clicking on different captions to get the effect you like.

Now, on your account page, you can add and delete email addresses in your address book, or even import contacts from Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, and other services.

Enjoy!

The PhotoShow Team

Press Release: New music catalog for PhotoShow

Today we announced that we will be adding a rotating catalog of 500 full length songs to PhotoShow, exclusively for our Premium users!! We're very excited to be able to bring this great selection of new music to you for your PhotoShows. You'll be able to use this music for any PhotoShow online, on DVD, or on PhotoShow TV. We'll post an announcement here when the music is available - stay tuned!

Read the full press release here.

Add your own background to intro titles

Last week we released an update to PhotoShow.com allowing you to add your own background photos to the introductory title.

Just go to the Titles tab then click the "Backgrounds" button. Note: Not all title styles allow customizable backgrounds. Once you're in the background picker, choose "Upload a photo..." to use one of your own pictures!

 

Other changes in recent weeks:

• Starting "Preview" now plays from the currently selected photo instead of from the beginning, making it easier to view the part of the show you're working on.
  
• You can now see all photo elements in each tab. For example, captions, balloons, and stickers will all appear on the photo even though you are on the captions tab. This makes it easier to enhance your photo without having overlapping elements.
  
• Fixed a problem with posting PhotoShows to your Facebook wall.
  
• The Account page has been split into "Account Information" and "Software Downloads" to make it easier to find things.

Enjoy!

The PhotoShow Team

Contextual Help, Preview from current photo, Windows 7 support

New features on PhotoShow.com make it easier then ever to create PhotoShows!

1. A new fold-out panel in the PhotoShow editor shows you Tips for each tab to help you get started making great shows.

 

2. When you click on Preview Mode when making a show, it will now play from the currently selected photo instead of from the beginning, making it easier to view your changes as you go!

3. All your photo enhancements will now appear in each tab! For example, when you are in the Captions tab, any stickers, borders, and bubbles you added will still be visible on the photo. This makes it easier to see your final result without using preview mode (and prevents you from adding a bubble over a caption, etc).

4. Photo thumbnails now appear faster when going to make or edit a show.

If you haven't already updated to build 787 of PhotoShow 6, you can get this on your account page. PhotoShow 6 is fully compatible with Windows 7!

Other changes and fixes include:

• You can set a photo duration for up to 20 seconds (instead of 10)
• RSS feed icon now appears for channel pages in the browser, indicating a valid RSS feed link is available from that page
• The share email message field now properly limits text entry to 256 characters (and displays the number you have left).
• Internet Explorer 6 does not support all features on PhotoShow, and now informs you of that at the top of the page.
• PhotoShows embedded in other web sites no longer display the "Loading" graphic in the show cover photo.
• Music content will be loaded even when you go to the music picker before the show is finished loading.

Enjoy!

The PhotoShow Team

Beautiful channel themes, resizable editor, Halloween style, and Emoticons

Over the last couple weeks we released some excellent new features on PhotoShow.com and in PhotoShow 6. To get the latest version of PhotoShow 6 select "Check for Updates" from the Help menu in the application.

You'll love the new channel themes for your PhotoShow galleries, featuring over a dozen beautiful themes you can apply to your collections of PhotoShows with a single click. (Former Comcast and PhotoShow.net users will appreciate the return of this popular feature).

Here's an example of the Air theme applied to a channel page: http://www.photoshow.com/members/PhotoShow-Fanatic/all

Just go to your My PhotoShows page or any channel you've created, click on a theme to preview it, then click "Done" to apply the theme. If you want to use the same theme for all your channels, check the box for "Apply to all my channels" before you click "Done." Or, set a different theme for each channel!

This feature is available for PREMIUM subscribers only. (Themes will not appear if you are using Internet Explorer 6. Upgrade to Internet Explorer 7 or 8, or Firefox, Safari, etc).

 

There's a new Spooky Halloween style with fun music for sharing those Halloween night pics.

 

We've also added new Emoticon stickers (Premium users only) for fun expressions on any photo.

 

And finally, when making a PhotoShow on PhotoShow.com, you'll notice that the editor now automatically expands to fill your browser window, for a much richer and enjoyable authoring experience. To change the size of the editor, just adjust the size of your browser window (grab the lower right hand corner of the window).

 

Enjoy!

The PhotoShow Team

Adding music to PhotoShows

Here's a quick tutorial on using the music features in the "Music & Photos" tab. These features are available on PhotoShow.com and in PhotoShow 6, which can be downloaded on your account page.

(click on any picture to enlarge)

Clicking on the music notes will open the Music picker.

Your music selection is applied to your PhotoShow at the photo you designated. Now you can change where the song starts and ends if you like.

 

 

70 New Music tracks and Upload MPEG-2 video

Today we released an update to PhotoShow.com! New features include:

• Over 70 new music tracks to choose from, and new Alternative, Soundtrack, and Spiritual categories.
• A new "Suggested for this Style" category for quickly switching between songs that work for your selected style.
• Instrumental tracks are now marked with a special icon to help you find songs without vocals. (Sometimes song lyrics can be distracting when they don't match the photos in your show.)
• Support for MPEG-2 video clips when creating a show on PhotoShow.com.

This release also fixes a problem with the syntax (a missing tag) of the flash code for pasting into Blogger. 

Enjoy!

The PhotoShow Team

PhotoShow 6 update: Multiple songs per show

The latest version of PhotoShow 6 is now available for Premium members on your account page.

This version includes all the features and styles recently released on PhotoShow.com:

• Add up to 50 songs per show!
• New Summer Fun and Back to School Styles
• Playback slider control in authoring and preview
• All the other changes and fixes from the online show maker (see prior blog posts)

If you are using a prior version of PhotoShow 6 your software will auto-update sometime over the next week, but feel free to download and install the application from your account page at any time.

Enjoy!

The PhotoShow Team

Summer Fun and Back To School styles

We've just added two new great styles on PhotoShow.com: Summer Fun and Back to School. It's not too late to make some great shows from your summer vacations or share your kid's big day back at school!

 

We also released a completely new PhotoShow DVD service! Though you won't see much difference when making a DVD, the back-end systems we use to create these DVDs has been completely modernized.

You'll notice that the purchasing experience is much easier (fewer steps), you'll get a shipping confirmation email with tracking number (if available), and the DVDs now use Sonic Solutions' (Roxio's parent company) DVD mastering technology for the highest compliance and compatibility with DVD players.

Thanks for sharing.

The PhotoShow Team