Boinx FotoMagico 1.5
Review

Boinx FotoMagico 1.5
Company: Boinx
Price: $79.00 US

http://www.fotomagico.com

It’s here, it works, it’s affordable, and it comes with timely tech support. It’s easy to learn, very easy to edit and export, and really impressive in its final output. It is FotoMagico, dynamic audio slide show software that will have your family, friends, students, teachers, or business associates all saying: “Wow, that was great. Do you think I can learn how to make a show like yours?”

In my work as a computer tutor, I provide in-home training (“your place or mine?”) on a complete range of MacTopics. My longest-standing client is a personal friend of over 40 years who produces custom slide shows using consumer software. Her name is Nancy, and she was v-e-r-y frustrated with the Windows shareware application she used for many years. It was good, but never really good enough. Now, with her MacBook Pro and Boinx Software’s universal application, FotoMagico, she is on her way to becoming proficient and creative with a slide show app she can actually understand, because it feels like it was designed with Nancy’s goals and talents in mind.

FotoMagico is try-before-you-buy commercialware. The 12.5 MB download is swift for most users, and installation is effortless. You can use a temporary license during your trial period, and when you decide to proceed, your online payment yields a permanent license that gets you up and running in a minute or two.

Hint #1: Don’t try to type in the tongue twister license code, because you can easily select-copy-paste it into the registration box.

Hint #2: FotoMagico has its own built-in software update capability, so you’ll always be current as fixes and improvements are added.

Hint #3: FotoMagico’s Preferences are not numerous, but they are a little confusing until you know what you’re doing, so don’t change them just for kicks.

Hint #4: A better idea is to play around with FotoMagico’s Menu items (again not too many), because here is where you make decisions that are the most important for any presentation in progress.

Spend up to an hour studying FotoMagico’s tutorial and Help Menu items, including a handy FAQ web site. All three of the above could be more comprehensive. Become familiar with the interface, consisting of: Storyboard and Stage Area, Settings box with crucial drop down items, and, most important!!, the innocent-at-first-glance Image, Audio, and Options Panel, from where you access your photos and audio tracks, and create all your transitions and other effects.

Let’s make a basic slide show from scratch. Open FotoMagico, select the Images tab upper right, then navigate to and highlight a small group of pictures from your iPhoto Library (easier to do than explain). Do you see the area below center called “Drag Images Here”? Drag any one of your selected photos into that space, and all the ones you highlighted will show up there. Then do more or less the same procedure with a song from your iTunes Library, via the Audio tab, also upper right. Click-hold-position the song’s bar display at the beginning of your first slide, bottom left.

Click on Options upper right, and then click the Image triangle to view its options, and in “Continue,” choose “At Mouse Click.” Then click the generic Play triangle underneath the main large window in the center of your FotoMagico screen, and click click click to advance each slide to the timing of your choice.

But wait, there’s more, a LOT MORE, from a large selection of snazzy timed transitions, to audio markers for advancing slides to the beat of your favorite music, wowie zowie whiz bam boom. You want captions and titles? Whoopee, because in about five minutes you can become an expert on making titles in any color, size, font, or position that will remain politely in one position or will fly across your images to your specifications. Boinx has sample shows on their web site, made by people just like you, to inspire and motivate users.

If you like your slide shows to zoom around the screen, Boinx tells MyMac.com: “Our Pan and Zoom feature is one of the most important parts of our app, especially the easy authoring of the animation. Your readers can turn on Pan and Zoom (Command-K), then choose Randomize Motion in the Menu, for a quick demo of the effect.” Nancy-the-switcher and I tried this, and it certainly produces a dynamic effect. Don’t overdo it or your viewers may get motion sickness, or run screaming from the room due to sensory overload. A little goes a long way, from our experience.

We’re using version 1.5.x for this evaluation, and v1.6 was just released. It has substantial improvements, especially to the export process. There are “Export” and “Burn DVD” Menu items in v1.5 that we won’t critique, with v1.6 now available, but you can sleep comfortably knowing that exporting and burning DVDs of your FotoMagico shows is a straightforward process.

OS X 10.4 Tiger is recommended for using FotoMagico on any recent Mac with 800 MHz or faster processor and plenty of memory. Boinx provides more detailed specs on its web site, and tells MyMac.com: “More important than processor speed is a powerful graphics card with lots of VRAM, but having a fast machine certainly isn’t bad.” Nemo says the faster and more powerful your Macintosh, the better your results with FotoMagico, but go ahead and check out their trial version and demo finished show if you are uncertain.

MyMac.com is treating this as a first look review for a fine product that is under constant improvement and development. The more Nancy and I use FotoMagico, the more intuitive becomes our relationship with it, and the more impressed we are with its engineering team and tech support response. FotoMagico has a few aspects that are somewhere between bugs and tune-ups, but when we mention them to Boinx their response is consistently either “Oh, Nemo, here’s how you can do that already” or “We’re working on that one right now.”

We rate FotoMagico as a strong 4 out of 5, with hopes for a higher score as the application evolves. Bravo to Boinx for a job well done so far, and thanks to them for a fine presentation team at Macworld Expo 2006 and for speedy response to our technical queries.