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daveb6722477
daveb6722477
Participant
September 5, 2020
Question

PSE 20 Slideshow Functionality - Am I Missing Something?

  • September 5, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 294 views

Hi there,

 

I recently 'upgraded' from PSE 9 to PSE 20. I am having difficulty converting exisiting, and creating new, Slideshows.

 

In PSE 9 the Slideshow functionality was quite rich, including the ability:

- to determine the duration of each slide

- to determine the duration and type of each transition

- to add pan and zoom to slides

- to trim audio

- to fit slides to audio

 

In PSE 20, which I assumed would have included several years of improvements and new functionality, none of this seems possible. The Slideshow interface is very basic by comparison, and the only functionality I can find is to add photos, add audio, and choose from six pre-defined 'themes' (which are all awful).

 

Am am I missing something, or did Adobe really missell me PSE 20 when they said it was better than PSE 9?

 

Many thanks.

 

Cheers,

Dave 

 

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

MichelBParis
MichelBParis
Legend
September 5, 2020

Officially, the PSE9 old slideshows were dropped mainly because they were still in 32 bits and could not be easily converted to 64 bits.

While a number of users like you were very happy with the flexibility with which you could create your own custom slideshows, the general public felt that it was necessary to offer the ability to work with higher res, and that the only practical media for sharing was to create mp4 videos.

That was exactly what Premiere Elements could already offer with still more customization features. For a marketing point of view, it was obviously better for Adobe to create a clear distinction between Photoshop and Premiere Elements to promote the combo of both softwares. For another marketing reason, it was logical to show how the new tendency to offer enhanced features brought by artificial intelligence was going to be a clear advantage for Photoshop Elements.

So, the PSE slideshows became nearly totally automatic and lost customization (reserved to Premiere Elements).

You can still use your old PSE9 for customized slideshows but I am not sure that's the expected format for your public which may want easily sharable high res video, either 'fancy' automatic or fully customizable according to your choice.

It's difficult to please everybody and much has been going on since PSE9.

 

daveb6722477
daveb6722477Author
Participant
September 7, 2020

Hi Michel,

 

Thank you for your reply.

 

If I have understood you correctly (and apologies if I have not), the only way I can get the same richness of functionality for creating and editing photo slideshows that I had with PSE9, is to purchase Premiere Elements (which I believe is video editing software) at an additional cost of £87. Is that correct?

 

If so, I still fail to understand why that represents an improvement to the PSE product - removing good functionality and replacing it with basic functionality is not progress, and does not justfify asking customers to pay another £87 (the current price to 'upgrade' to PSE20).

 

By the way, my 'public' is principally my family and friends - watching PSE9 slideshows on a monitor or TV screen, and sharing WMV files, has not been problematic and suits my needs fully.

 

Thanks again.

 

Cheers,

Dave

MichelBParis
MichelBParis
Legend
September 8, 2020

Hi Dave,

I totally understand your point. Now, imagine you are a product or marketing strategist at Adobe, you'll have to look at consumer demands (Adobe has all required tools to check product usage and statistics) and to justify additional costs by additional sales and profit). The ten years old version is totally obsolete and the migration can't be made by a simple recompilation for 64 bits. So it costs much more that you might imagine. On the other hand, with a perpetual licence model like PSE, you must have something new to entice new consumers or old consumers to upgrade. There will be practically no loss by not satisfying old users no longer upgrading and significant gain with even a small part of the costumer base subscribing to the combo PSE + PE instead of only PSE. And it appears that the 'automatic' slideshows are welcomed by a younger consumer part.

 

Also, slideshows are not the core of the editing features of PSE. The very important changes in the nearly ten versions after PSE9 are far more important than the old slideshow features. So I would recommend you to do a Google search for comparisons about the best free video editors for Windows. I have found that there are really good solutions.

 

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