Slideshow Software

I visit my grandma three or four times a year, but I speak with her on the phone at least every two weeks and every time we speak grandma tells me to send her photos with the kids because she misses them and wants to see how much they grew up. And every time I tell her I don't have any printed photos I promise I will print some soon. This is true: ever since we got a digital photo camera we stopped printing photos and displaying them in the photo albums that used to show our lives in a kind of photo collage.



We have tons of digital photos on the hard drive or saved on DVDs, but we rarely watch them. We wait for the best opportunity to share nice memories from the past with our friends and family, usually an anniversary or a family reunion at Christmas or New Year's Eve Party. And usually my husband chooses the best or funniest photos in chronological order and presses the "slide show" button of the photo display software.



But this year I want to try something different and use some slideshow software that will allow not only an automatic display of the photos, but also special effects, transition effects between the photos, added musical background and even photo editing with comments or names written below. I was curious to see what are the best software packages and I found the best of them, according to the sales: X-Treme phot story on CD and DVD, Polaroid My memories suite, Pro Show gold, inAlbum, CyberLink Media Show, DVD Slide Show Builder, DVD Slide Show, CD and DVD Picture Show and Microsoft PowerPoint. All of them offer incredible features, but you, just like me, must choose the perfect one for you.

If you are a professional photographer then you know better the best package you can find on the market, but if you are only an amateur, a beginner in this art who wants to have a good time with family and friends, there's no need to purchase some very sophisticated slideshow software, as it will be too hard to use and, besides, you will use it only occasionally.

But, in any case, the interface must be very simple and easy to utilize and so must the software. The basic feature of such software must include: the use of various graphics formats like JPEG, JPG, GIF, PNG, etc; the possibility to use different music format files as background (MP3, WAV, MIDI, MID, AU, etc); the possibility to choose the slideshow for all the photos selected, of groups of photos or individual slides presentation; select from many transition effects between the photos ; have the opportunity to preview the slideshow and maybe to burn the photo compilation on CD or DVD after displaying it.



If you are interested in getting some free slideshow software remember that they offer limited features (freeware) or a limited amount of time (the free trials). Always choose the software that offers the best and most number of features, as the result will be much better this way. The more elaborated packages allow you to: customize the audio options (controlling the volume, timing, offset, fading in or out of the sound) by getting your own music; obtain motion effects of the photos in the slide show by using pan, zoom or rotate features; use all the image options in order to get the best photos ( crop, rotate, flip, red eye removal, adjust colour and brightness, etc); make all the necessary photo adjustments to get the best slideshow. And remember: the best slideshow software is the one that helps you get the wanted result.