looking for good slideshow software for a wedding reception

Hi:

I have several dozen photo (both digital and scanned). I want to put together a nice slideshow with music in the background with some nice transistion effects. I would prefer that the slides be timed, but if need be, I can click manually. Can anyone suggest anything?

P.S. I want to show it on a laptop through a projection device. I want to be able to use music that is recorded on the computer.

Ideally, the end package would be one CD that you can pop into ANY computer and have it run, but not necessary.

TIA--Earl Takasaki
The Geneva Companies
[email protected]

Powerpoint.

Earl Takasaki said:

Hi:

I have several dozen photo (both digital and scanned). I want to
put together a nice slideshow with music in the background with
some nice transistion effects. I would prefer that the slides be
timed, but if need be, I can click manually. Can anyone suggest
anything?

P.S. I want to show it on a laptop through a projection device. I
want to be able to use music that is recorded on the computer.

Ideally, the end package would be one CD that you can pop into ANY
computer and have it run, but not necessary.

TIA
--
Earl Takasaki
The Geneva Companies
[email protected]

Click to expand...

I second that, its the tool which allows you to embed sound & video also into its self running presentation. Its user interface is quite easy to learn.
Ranjan

Pepe said:

Earl Takasaki said:

Hi:

I have several dozen photo (both digital and scanned). I want to
put together a nice slideshow with music in the background with
some nice transistion effects. I would prefer that the slides be
timed, but if need be, I can click manually. Can anyone suggest
anything?

P.S. I want to show it on a laptop through a projection device. I
want to be able to use music that is recorded on the computer.

Ideally, the end package would be one CD that you can pop into ANY
computer and have it run, but not necessary.

TIA
--
Earl Takasaki
The Geneva Companies
[email protected]

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Powerpoint? LOL
No way!
Arcsoft Acdsee has every option that you described.
It's shareware
Just download it from http://www.acdsee.com

ranjan said:

Pepe said:

Earl Takasaki said:

Hi:

I have several dozen photo (both digital and scanned). I want to
put together a nice slideshow with music in the background with
some nice transistion effects. I would prefer that the slides be
timed, but if need be, I can click manually. Can anyone suggest
anything?

P.S. I want to show it on a laptop through a projection device. I
want to be able to use music that is recorded on the computer.

Ideally, the end package would be one CD that you can pop into ANY
computer and have it run, but not necessary.

TIA
--
Earl Takasaki
The Geneva Companies
[email protected]

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I agree, Powerpoint can be overkill. It's mainly a business presentation tool. You can use it to make self contained slideshows, but the procedure is awkward. Here's one to consider:

http://www.firehand.com/lightning/

I've been using it and it seems to work very well. You can use it to make self-executing slideshows, photo albums and screensavers. They also have a plugin available to incorporate video into your slideshows.

SteveB

Alex Pupko said:

ranjan said:

Pepe said:

Earl Takasaki said:

Hi:

I have several dozen photo (both digital and scanned). I want to
put together a nice slideshow with music in the background with
some nice transistion effects. I would prefer that the slides be
timed, but if need be, I can click manually. Can anyone suggest
anything?

P.S. I want to show it on a laptop through a projection device. I
want to be able to use music that is recorded on the computer.

Ideally, the end package would be one CD that you can pop into ANY
computer and have it run, but not necessary.

TIA
--
Earl Takasaki
The Geneva Companies
[email protected]

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Try SlideShowToGo. It's a slick little package with a lot of options.

Lucinda
masonfam.com

Earl Takasaki said:

Hi:

I have several dozen photo (both digital and scanned). I want to
put together a nice slideshow with music in the background with
some nice transistion effects. I would prefer that the slides be
timed, but if need be, I can click manually. Can anyone suggest
anything?

P.S. I want to show it on a laptop through a projection device. I
want to be able to use music that is recorded on the computer.

Ideally, the end package would be one CD that you can pop into ANY
computer and have it run, but not necessary.

TIA
--
Earl Takasaki
The Geneva Companies
[email protected]

Click to expand...

First, I've read on the web (on the Ziff/Davis site I believe) that slideshow features will be integrated into Win XP so if you don't need a slideshow program before XP is released (late October I think) and are planning to upgrade to Win XP that might be all you'd need. But you may need a special version of XP for a laptop or portable and perhaps that won't be available initially.

I've used Canon's Photo Organizer 2.0 for over a year now and I'm quite please with it. Price was $20 when I bought it last year. It's quite easy to create "film rolls" (just collections of pictures you import from folders on your hard drive, removable media, a connected scanner or digital camera plugged into your computer), and "Albums" (similar to film rolls but you can quickly add borders and captions to pics).

PO includes a reasonable array of easy-to-use editing features (many more than the typical minimal editor bundled with some cams that only provide a red-eye fix and cropping and rotating but not as extensive as full-blown pic editors), helpful "wizards" to guide you through the main tasks, like creating film rolls and albums.

It's easy to use and works very well and is quite stable on my home computer, a generic Pentium III, 800 MHz with 256 megs of RAM and a GeForce 2 MX graphics card, though I'm sure the software's system requirements are well below my computer's specs. I can't say PO has never crashed, but it's quite rare on my system at least.

It's easy to set up a slideshow by first quickly creating a "film roll". You click on the "Create New Film Roll" icon in the toolbar (or run the corresponding Wizard) and then browse to a folder of pics on your hard drive or on your digital camera. You just open the drive/folder where the desired pics are and then highlight one or more of the pics you wish to put in the film roll or select them all with a couple of mouse clicks and click on a button to add them to the film roll or album you're creating). You can also drag and drop pics (they're displayed as thumbnails once you open a folder and also in any film roll you open or are in the process of creating/editing) from source folders into a film roll.

The integrated slideshow software has several options including various types of transitions between pics (at 3 different speeds) and the choice of having the slide show run manually with mouse clicks or from the keyboard or changing the pics automatically at a time interval you type in, measured in seconds.

There are options for sound, but I confess I've never used them so I can't say for certain how well they work. If you have a digital camera that allows you to record and store audio with your pics, Photo Organizer docs say it will import the sound into a film roll along with each such pic and apparently all you have to do is turn on the "Play sounds" feature for the sound to be played along with the picture.

You can also link WAV or MID files on your hard drive to particular photos, or use the sound recorder built into Windows and a mic plugged into your computer to record narration for particular photos and that will play as the photo is displayed in the slideshow.

But if youwant something like a soundtrack playing continuously in the background PO doesn't include a feature like that. You'd have to open up a sound file player or CD-player and start it going separately as those features aren't included/integrated into PO. However, then the two different and non-integrated programs might interfere with each other. No big deal if the pics change a little irregularly but your audio might cut out or "stutter" while pics are changing.

Probably not likely if your playing a CD, but more likely, I'd guess, if you're running mp3's or playing WAV or MIDI files which sounds like what you plan to do. But even that potential problem might depend on your laptop or portable's specs.

My suggestion would be to burn a CD/R with the music you want to play on that and use your laptop's CD-ROM drive/software to play the music as I think that will cut down considerably on the load on the CPU and make it less likely that the pic and music software will noticeably interfere with each other.

I haven't used any of the other slideshow packages mentioned by other posters but I do like Canon's Photo Organizer both for organizing photos on my hard drive and putting together slide shows quickly.

I just open an already created film roll or quickly put one together from a folder of pics on my hard drive, click on Slideshow in the drop down "View" menu, choose a transition type, select either manual or automatic (and set the interval between pic changes that I want), and it starts right up and runs fine. Hitting the Esc key shuts down the show and kicks you right back to the Photo Organizer window with your film roll as you left it -- either the thumbnail display in a window or minimized at the bottom of the PO window if you did that before starting a slideshow. You can have several film rolls or albums open at once, by the way, and quickly change from one slideshow to another with a couple of mouse clicks. And you can drag and drop photos from one film roll into another.

And, by the way, it's quite easy to change the order of the pics in a film roll or delete one. Moving pics around is just a matter of grabbing the thumbnail and moving it to where you want it placed.

The delete routine is the standard right-click and highlight "Delete" that you use in Windows to delete a file or folder. But in Photo Organizer you're only deleting it from the film roll -- the original pic file remains on your hard drive. And all deleted pics are automatically sent to a "trash bin" much like the recycle bin on the Windows desktop. So if you delete something accidentally you can just open up the trash and pull it right out again rather than having to browse to the original folder you initially pulled it out from to add it to your film roll.

I guess customer support is good, but I've never had to use it as I found the instructions and interface to be quite clear (there is an integrated "Help File" of course) and the software performs well without problems.

And after you install it the software starts up with a Wizard that lets you select what you wish to do and then guides you through the process step by step. Once you've learned the software it's a bit quicker to turn off the Wizard and just use the drop down menus and toolbar icons to accomplish your tasks. But the Wizard is a very helpful feature when you're just learning to use the software.

I'm sure it's not as poweful as PowerPoint, but it's cheap, easy to use and I've been very pleased with it for some time now.

Good luck.

I use PhotoParade. It's like Powerpoint on steroids. Easy to learn, and dozens of professional themes, transitions and interfaces.

Earl Takasaki said:

Hi:

I have several dozen photo (both digital and scanned). I want to
put together a nice slideshow with music in the background with
some nice transistion effects. I would prefer that the slides be
timed, but if need be, I can click manually. Can anyone suggest
anything?

P.S. I want to show it on a laptop through a projection device. I
want to be able to use music that is recorded on the computer.

Ideally, the end package would be one CD that you can pop into ANY
computer and have it run, but not necessary.

TIA
--
Earl Takasaki
The Geneva Companies
[email protected]

Click to expand...

Lucinda said:

Try SlideShowToGo. It's a slick little package with a lot of options.

Lucinda

Click to expand...

Hi Lucinda,

I cannot locate SlideShowToGo, and the link to ZDnet on your site doesn't appear to work.

Any ideas?

Regards,

Robin [Redbreast]

Earl Takasaki said:

Hi:

I have several dozen photo (both digital and scanned). I want to
put together a nice slideshow with music in the background with
some nice transistion effects. I would prefer that the slides be
timed, but if need be, I can click manually. Can anyone suggest
anything?

P.S. I want to show it on a laptop through a projection device. I
want to be able to use music that is recorded on the computer.

Ideally, the end package would be one CD that you can pop into ANY
computer and have it run, but not necessary.

TIA
--
Earl Takasaki
The Geneva Companies
[email protected]

Click to expand...

Try easy CD Creator 5.It allows you to burn a cd with your pics in slide show format with music and transitions