Making Slideshows from Still Images

A. For viewing on the computer screen
A slideshow is an automated presentation that shows a series of digital photos on the computer screen in sequence, possibly with background music, captions, titles, spoken narration, and video effects.  Good for distributing photos to friends and family that have a computer.  If you have a CD-R burner on your computer, you can copy photos and slideshows to a CD-R for easy distribution.

1. Windows XP Picture and Fax Viewer.  If your computer has the Windows XP operating system, you can open any folder containing pictures, right-click on any one of the pictures, and select Open with... => Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.  Click the > button to see the next picture in the folder. To see a simple slideshow of all the images in that folder, click on the little movie screen icon at the bottom OR press the f11 key on the keyboard.  To stop it, press the ESC key.  
 
2. Picasa 2.  An excellent free photo organizer program.  Download it from picasa.com.  Has a built-in full-screen slideshow mode. You can also add captions to each photo. If your computer has a CD-R burner, it can burn an auto-play slideshow CD-ROM that you can send to friends.  All the recipient has to do is to insert the CD into the CD-ROM drive and a menu of slideshows appears automatically. They can also copy the pictures to their computer if they wish. See the handout "Picasa 2 Photo Organizer" on the Digital Imaging course CD-ROM for details.

3. DZ Slideshow is a $19 utility that can quickly make slideshows of all the pictures in any folder.  It has the ability to show pictures full-screen and can save "stand-alone" slideshow as a single file that can be exported to other computers that have no slideshow software. See "DZSlideshow.doc" on the CD-ROM for instructions on installing and using this program.  Works on Windows 98/Me/2000/XP.  There is a time-limited demo of this program on the Digital Imaging course CD-ROM. Full program costs $19. See http://www.dzsoft.com/ for more info.

4. Photo Story 2 ($20, in Microsoft Plus Digital Media Edition, for Windows XP only) is an easy-to-use program that can make professional-looking slideshows from your images.  Automatically applies fade (dissolve) transitions between slides, zooming and panning effects on each slide, and can include titles, spoken narration (recorded with a microphone as you view the slides) or background music imported from sound files in MP3 or WAV format.  The program saves output in WMV format that can be viewed with Windows Media Player.  Can also burn CD-Rs in VCD format (see below).

5. MemoriesOnTV 2.1 ($50, http://www.picturetotv.com/) is similar to Photostory 2 but it works on Windows 98, ME, 2000, or XP, has more flexible zooming and panning effects on each slide, multiple music tracks, saves its ouput in MPEG format for viewing on the computer, and it can also burn VCD, SVCD and DVD disks containing multiple videos per disk.

6. Web Photo Albums.  To distribute pictures to distant friends and family via the internet, the best option is to use a Web photo album site rather than sending pictures via email.  This avoids clogging up their email inbox with lots of pictures.  Go to shutterfly.com or to webshots.com and sign up for a free account.  They are free and they step you through the process of uploading picrures, adding captions, and will even send an automated email message to your recipients inviting them to click on a link to see the pictures. Recipients can view the pictures, see a slideshow of the pictures, order prints and other merchandise, or download pictures to print on their own computer. (Compared to some other photo album Web sites, Shutterfly and Webshots have the advantage that they do not require the recipients of the pictures to sign in or give their name and email address in order to view the pictures).  

7. Slideshow as a screen saver.  Windows XP users can define a slideshow of their own pictures as a screen saver: right-click on the desktop, select Properties, click on the Screen Saver tab, click in the Screen saver menu and select "My Pictures Slideshow.  Then click the Settings button, click Browse, and navigate to any folder containing pictures that you want to show.  Click OK three times.  When the computer goes into screen saver mode, your pictures will be shown as a slide show.  Other windows users can try "SlideShowScreensaver.exe" (in Software installer/Windows), a freeware screensaver that displays a slideshow of your images.  Just double-click SlideShowScreensaver.exe to install, then right-click on your desktop, select Properties, click on the Screen Saver tab, select Slideshow from the pop-up menu.  To configure for your pictures, click Settings.

B. For viewing on a television screen.
This is best for group viewing - TVs usually have bigger screens, more comfortable seating, and better speakers. Ideal for distributing slideshows to friends and family that don't have a computer.  

1. CD-R with JPEG images.  Many recent DVD players are JPG compatible, which means that they can read any CD containing digital photos (e.g. a Picasa Gift CD or a photo CD from a photo finisher) and show them on the TV screen as a simple slide show (without effects). 

2. VCD (Video CD) and SVCD (Super Video CD).  A VCD is a special format of CD that contains about one hour of video data. (SVCD is similar but has higher video quality). They can be created on a CD-R burner, using ordinary blank CD-Rs, and played on most recent DVD players. (Older DVD players can not play VCDs and SVCDs). MemoriesOnTV 2.1 (see A5 above) can burn VCD, SCVD, or DVD video slideshows, whereas Photo Story 2 (see A4 above) makes VCDs only. VCD and SVCD disks can also be viewed on a PC with Windows Media Player 8 or later.

3. DVD.  If you have a DVD burner attached to your computer, you can create DVDs that can be viewed on any standard DVD player, even older models that can't play JPG, VCDs and SVCDs. You must use blank DVD-R disks or DVD+R disks, depending upon which format your burner supports (some are dual format burners that support both formats). DVDs can hold more video data and provide higher video quality than VCDs and SVCDs. To make a series of still images into a DVD movie, you need to use a program such as MemoriesOnTV 2.1 ($50, http://www.picturetotv.com/, see A5 above) or VideoWave 7 Professional ($30, CompUSA).

	Note: Background music for slideshows can come from any audio CD's that you own. Just copy the desired songs to your computer's hard drive as an MP3 file (e.g. using Windows Media Player 10, which saves the tracks into My Documents/My Music). Select the desired song(s) when the slideshow program gives you a chance to add background music. See "Ripping and burning WMP 10" on the CD-ROM.

(c) Tom O'Haver (toh@umd.edu), March 2005