Watch this video for a demo of how it works.

A link to the online tutorial is included in the readme document of the download file.

FILES: 1 slide style (.pxs) 4 video themes
IMAGE: Landscape or Portrait
FORMAT: 16:9
PROSHOW: Producer 4+

Watch this video for a demo of how it works.

Ideal as a title opener for wedding shows or slideshows that feature couples.

FILES: 1 slide style (.pxs)
IMAGE: Landscape or Portrait
FORMAT: 16:9 (might work at 4:3 but the titles will be cut)
PROSHOW: Producer 4+

It’s Christmas! A time for celebration, thanksgiving and fun. But let’s not forget it’s also the time where we celebrate Christ. So lets express it all through love for our family, friends and everyone around us.

I know you will all be busy right now so I just want to say Merry Christmas and I pray that you and your family will be blessed this season.

God bless!

- Charlie

It’s a set of 18 transitions that divide your slide in several sections and flips them like cards in horizontal, vertical and sometimes random directions to reveal the next image.

Watch this demo video that we prepared to show you what we mean.

We have two versions for this set–a dark set and a light set which we designed to provide maximum contrast to your images and slides and make the effect really pop out.

FILES: 18 .pxt files
FORMAT: 16:9 and 4:3
PROSHOW: Producer 4.5+ only

Shortcut keys

I know many of us have overworked mice… or is “mouses” the right term? :=) But using keyboard shortcuts are a real timesaver for almost every application there is. The only problem is that you need to memorize them, and in this day and age our mind can only absorb so much.

But I promise to make this easy. Just remember ALT+0.

That’s about what I need to share with you. Easy isn’t it?

Now all you got to do after adding every photo to your slides is to select each slide and hit ALT+0 and every photo in that slide will automatically be set to “Fill frame”. No more selecting “Fill frame” for every layer which is so time consuming.

But I’m afraid I’ll forget the shortcut

Okay I know for some even a simple key like that can be forgotten if we don’t use it often enough. Or maybe we just love our mouse so much that it pains us to part from it. :=) Here’s what you can do.

Select the slide you want to change to fill frame and hit Slide > Scale Slide from the main menu and you will see the same figure as shown above. Alternatively you can right click the slide and select Customize Slides > Scale Slide Image and you are off.

But what if you want to make it as the default for every photo

Well of course there is a way.

All you need to do is hit Edit > Preferences from the main menu and click on “Show Defaults” on the choices on the right of the screen. At the bottom is the Default Image Settings section. Select “Fill frame” as the value for scaling and hit OK.

Now whenever you add a new layer to your slides the default scaling will always be set to “Fill frame”.

The title styles feature an image zooming in on a 2 x 4 grid with a title box in one of the four corners. The supporting transitions fade out each element of the grid to reveal the next slide.

If it’s kind of difficult to understand you can view the demo video here… :=)

If you prefer another effect on the image like rotating it instead of zooming, of course you could fully customize it. You can even change the color of the black box behind the title to any color you wish. Instructions on how to do it are included in the readme file.

You can use this title slide styles to tell a good story as you can see in the demo using a very wonderful poem.

FILES: 4 slide styles (.pxs) plus 4 transitions (.pxt)
IMAGE: Landscape or Portrait
FORMAT: 16:9 and 4:3
PROSHOW: Producer 4+ for the slide styles but the transitions only work for Producer 4.5+

First let’s get ourselves an image of a candle.

Just about any candle image will do. For this project I used this wonderful image from blogpaul in Flickr.

If you would like to follow along with this tutorial, you can download the project file here. A PDF version of this tutorial is also available for download here.

Adding the layers

There will be two layers for this project. The first layer will be our candle image and the second is a radial gradient layer which we will later on use as an adjustment layer for our effect.

First add our candle image to a new slide by dragging it to an empty slide in the slide list.

Next let’s create our gradient layer

Double click our slide and select the Layers > Layer Settings tab or just simply press Ctrl+F4.

Right click anywhere on the layers list and select Add Layer > Add Gradient.

Make sure that the Presets value is set to Masks and the Type is Radial and select the very first preset option (white fading to black gradient).

In the colors section double click twice anywhere on the color bar to create two additional color stays. You should have 4 color stays at the end.

Use the following settings for each color stay.

If you used a different image than the one in the project file you might need to adjust the positions of the two middle color stays.

When you’re done, hit OK.

Your preview window should now look something like this.

If you don’t see the gradient layer just make sure that it’s at the top of your layer stack with the candle image below it.

Creating the adjustment layer

We are now going to convert our gradient layer into an adjustment layer.

Check the adjustment layer check box in the Layer settings tab. For the type select Intensity (Grayscale) and leave the invert option unchecked.

In the preview window, drag the gradient layer until the center crosshair is near the base of the light of the candle. It should be obvious by now that this gradient will become the glow of our candle.

Let’s make our candle flicker

To make our candle flicker open the Effects > Adjustment Effects tab by pressing Ctrl-F8.

With the gradient layer selected right click on the value to the right of the white point slider and select Add Modifier.

This should now bring up the modifier window. If you are not familiar with modifiers don’t worry. Hang in there and just follow along.

It takes time to master this part of the program and there are many materials on the web you can use as a reference. You can make a search at the Proshow Enthusiasts forum for starters.

Back to our project…

What we want to do is create a random adjustment to the white point value of our gradient layer to mimic the flickering effect of a candle.

To do this, follow these settings for our modifier.

TYPE OF ACTION: Add to Modifier
AMOUNT FROM FUNCTION: Random
WAVE BEGINS AT: Start of Slide
RANGE: 100
GRANULARITY: 5
SMOOTHING: 1

What this setting does is that it tells Proshow to modify the white point value of our layer to a random value between 0 – 100 and change this value every 0.05 seconds.

That should do it for now. Hit OK.

Notice the red nick at the top right of the white point value? That is an indicator that a modifier is in effect for this property.

Hit the preview button and this should already give you a nice flickering candle effect.

You might want to end here already but for me personally, I’d like to have a little more of the background showing off when the candle flickers so I add another modifier but this time to the brightness value.

Following the same process, right click on the value to the right of the brightness slider and select Add Modifier.

This time we will use a variable amount for our modifier based on the value of the white point which we edited earlier. Use these settings.

What this basically means is that Proshow will adjust the value of the brightness to 20% of the value of the white point.

This brightens the background when the candle is at its brightest and darkens the background when the candle is at its darkest. Quite a trick!

Hit OK and preview your work again. Notice how the background shows off better this time.

You can play around with the settings as you desire. Change the granularity value if you like to control how fast the candle flickers. Or the range if you like to control how bright it gets.

Would you like to view this tutorial as a PDF document? Download it here.

Would like to have a copy of the project file I used for this tutorial? Get it here.

Let me know what you think about it.