Skylark DVD - Software


These are some (but not all) of the things SkyView does much better than the Windows XP image viewer.

1. Displays a Greater Range of Image File Formats - Kodak Photo CD (used by photographers), Professional 16-bit TIFF (used by graphics professionals) and 16-bit PNG (used by researchers), Photoshop PSD (used by graphics artists), IFF (used by videographers), PICT (from Apple Macintosh), SGI (from Silicon Graphics computers) and more.

2. Ability to Control the Presentation Rate from 0 seconds to infinity - If a presenter cannot change the rate at which images are viewed, they cannot tailor a slideshow for their specific needs and audience. SkyView lets users change the display rate with precise control (as fine as 0.01 seconds) even as the presentation is being made.

3. Ability to Scale and Letterbox images - Most simple viewers (including Windows XP viewer) only show small images at their original size. With SkyView you can choose to enlarge images to fill the screen and you have a choice of ways to fit images to the screen - Original Size, Fit to Window, Letterbox, and Overscan (which eliminates the letterbox bars completely).

4. Ability to Choose Which Images are Shown with a Simple Filter - SkyView has a powerful and yet easy-to-use option to select files based on their names. For example, you can type in the word "Vacation" to only present files from your vacation.

5. Ability to Present Images Across multiple Folders and Subfolders - SkyView can search through multiple folders for its presentation and can optionally include subfolders. Most image collections are arranged in sets of folders; SkyView lets you present these collections no matter how many subfolders there are.

6. Powerful 'VCR' Controls - SkyView has really helpful controls to quickly Advance, Skip Forward and Skip back, Rewind, Fast Forward, etc. just like the best DVD players.

7. End Presentation Controls - SkyView gives the presenter different options at the end of his slideshow - Loop (which repeats the images), Hold (which keeps the last image displayed), and End (which neatly finishes and closes the presentation). In most presentations, the last frame is the most important. [The Windows XP viewer only has loop and has no way of telling when the end is reached.]

8. Smart Image Technology - SkyView recognizes images even if they have the wrong or missing file type [the 'dot' extension]. This is a common issue for novice computer users. The Windows XP viewer and other slideshow programs will skip these files or crash.

9. Presentation Feedback - SkyView displays a helpful progress bar to show progress through the presentation, each file name, and the current operation being performed, such as 'Finding files', 'Loading', 'Scaling', etc.

10. Presentation Quality - SkyView provides a full range of image scaling options that make images that need to be resized look as good as possible - Nearest Neighbor, Bilinear, Bicubic, Smooth Bicubic, and Advanced. Without these options, enlarged images look blocky and reduced images will look distorted. (Windows XP only has Nearest Neighbor.)

Even more things to think about...

11. Image Aspect - Images that were created or captured for television, fax or print can have a non-square pixel aspect. SkyView takes this aspect information into account to show these images correctly. Without taking this into account, these images will look squeezed wide or be displayed too tall.

12. Full Image Gamut - Professional images on Photo CD or 16-bit TIFF or PNG images can have a much wider than usual gamut (the range from dark to light). Most programs do not take this into account and these photos are usually displayed with overly white or black areas. SkyView intelligently assesses image gamut and uses a full 16-bit image path to display professional photos at their best.

13. Changes While Running - SkyView lets you make changes to settings such as image sizing, whether to pause at each image, display rate, and other controls while your presentation is running.

14. System Friendly - SkyView uses an advanced and elegant installation technology that does not interfere with the Windows registry. Installation and operation of the SkyView program will never disrupt other programs that may be installed or running, and SkyView will run on any Windows computer from Windows 98 through Windows XP and those to come in the future.

15. Support and Upgrades - SkyView will continue to improve with upgrades that give users even more power and options. Support questions and even suggestions for future functionality are welcome at Skylark. SkyView users can look forward to the following features: AVI, MPEG, and other movie playback within the presentation; transitions between each image; background sound tracks; saving presentations as a movie; file name and date overlay; titling and text overlay; on-the-fly image enhancement; image import and scanning; photo printing and contact sheet printing; and much more.

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