Number 245 - October 2003
A Must-Have Program for Sharing Digital Images
by Ron Hirsch, Boca Raton Computer Society, Inc.

   If you are involved with digital images and want to make slide shows to showcase those images, and/or give copies to friends and family via CD's, or several other means, I strongly recommend a program that you absolutely must consider using. The program is called Digital Photo Slide Show. It's available at: www.digitalphotoslideshow.com

   Like all shareware, you can download the program, and try it out before you register it. It has an amazingly low registration fee of $19.95, and this includes free lifetime upgrades. The author, Jim Voelker, has done a fantastic job of creating an easy to use, but very powerful piece of software. It can meet the needs of advanced users, but can also be used easily by beginners.

   In this review, I'll cover many of the highlights of this program. For complete information on this program, visit the Web site above, and browse around. Then download the program and try it out yourself. If you have a broadband Internet connection, the download will take less than a minute. Dial-up users will of course experience a longer download time, but it is worth the effort.

   Periodically I've reviewed shareware programs here in Boca Bits. I only review programs that I feel are 5-star ratings. This program is actually better than my top rating of 5 stars.

What Does the Program Do?
   This program does a variety of things, and does them all well. One key feature which should appeal to BRCS (and TBCS) members is the capability to generate a self-running slide show, with lots of customized features. This show can be viewed on your computer. And, via a few simple steps, you can produce a CD with the slide show on it, and give it to friends and family to view on their computer. There are several options/ways for giving your slide show to others. You can:
   
  • Generate a custom screen saver with changing photo images of your choice.

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  • Generate a customized and continually changing wallpaper for your desktop.

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  • Generate a Web slide show.

    • See "Other Features" for other capabilities.

    How Does It Work?
       The user assembles a group of photo images, and places them in a designated folder. It's best to have already edited/cropped/ retouched these images so they are what you'd like to display.

       Once you have this folder of images assembled, the bulk of your work is done. With the straightforward procedures that the program offers, it will take you only a few simple clicks to do the job that you want.

       I've been using the program to generate slide shows from a large collection of scanned images of friends and family, starting back over 60 years ago. I go through the necessary steps, and then copy the final material onto a CD. That CD is set to be an auto running slide show.

       So, when friends and family put that CD into their computer's CD player, a list of all the slide shows on the CD comes on screen, and they can choose the one they want to view. When that show is over, the listing comes up on screen again, and another show can be selected.

       The beauty of this setup is that each slide show is just a another sub-folder in the root directory of the CD. So, when one wants to add more slide shows, all that is needed is to add more subfolders to the master folder on your hard drive, and burn another CD with all the new material you've added.

       Now, if you are saying to yourself How do I do all this stuff with folders and subfolders, maybe it's time to resurrect my series of tutorials from last year's Boca Bits. All that material is very necessary and important for computer users to have at their fingertips in their daily activities with any Windows program.

    Other Features
       The program is loaded with all kinds of nice features that users can choose from. If you go the www.digitalphoto slideshow.com Web site, you can get complete information on everything about Digital Photo Slide Show. Here's a partial listing of features:
       
  • There are now 135 transitions to choose from. These transitions are used when the slide changes to the next slide. There are wipes, dissolves, and you name it. The user can choose a different transition for any slide, or let the program just cycle through the full library, or a lesser library by selecting those desired. And, the display time for each slide can be set, either individually, or via a single entry that will apply to all slides.
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  • A caption text box can be added to any slide, and there are lots of nice formatting features available. Fonts, colors, size and position of the text box are all user-selectable. The text does not become part of the image itself or change the image in any way, but it is associated with the proper image automatically by the program.

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  • When the images are displayed on the computer monitor, they automatically adjust their displayed size to the maximum that the monitor screen can display. This is a plus. The user doesn't have to worry about playing with the image sizes-it's all automatic.

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  • At the top of the slide show display, there is a toolbar where viewers (should they desire) can pause the show, advance forward/backward manually, and a good selection of other options also.

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  • Background music can be played, by simply adding the music file into the folder containing the image files for that show. Add as many selections as you want, and they will be played in alphabetical order.

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  • Slides are also played in alphabetical order. In my slide shows, I have the slides named by using the year and month, such as 6306, as the first characters of the filename. So, I don't really have to do any renaming-I want them in chronological order. But, users can set the order for the images by simply adding a 3 or 4 numeric string to the beginning of the filename. If the file was named "picnic.jpg", and you wanted this to be the first slide, change the name to "0001picnic.jpg."


    •    Remember, you must use leading zeroes, or a group of slides that are numbered from 1 to 12, without leading zeroes, will play in this order 1, 10, 11, 12, 2, etc. But with a leading zero, they'll play as 01, 02, 03, etc. This is the way Windows does sorting.

       And, if you're asking "How do I rename files?", I'll once again refer you to my tutorial articles from 2001 and 2002. This is more necessary information that you should know.

    Miscellany
       Through the years I've produced many "slide shows", all of which were personal in nature, and used thousands of images I've scanned from negatives, slides, and prints (actually, going back to before I was born, and that's a long time ago).

       I've used MS PowerPoint, Corel Presentations, and an "album" program called Diji Album. They all did a nice job, and they all had capabilities for distributing the "shows" to others. The one problem that they all had was that they had to have each page composed individually, as each page had to have the image sized, positioned, etc. The beauty of Digital Photo Slide Show is that I don't have to do this anymore. All I have to do is put my images into a folder, and the program will position and size them automatically for me. And, since I'm now in the process of generating a whole new batch of shows, my workflow will be far more efficient.

       I will of course have to manually add any captions that I want to use, but I've now decided that the only caption on most pages will be the date. That simplifies the caption box size and position-it'll be the same on each page.

    Future Features
       I've been having some dialog with Jim Voelker, and I listed below a few of the things that I'd like to have him consider in the future.
       
  • An included utility to help the users rename images (using a 4-digit numeric string) to set the desired order.

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  • The ability to use not only background music, but voice clips, and have independent control of both. Various of my present shows in other programs allow the use of voice clips to be inserted when a given slide appears, and temporarily suspend the background music, and then have the music restart when the clip is finished, or when the next slide appears.

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  • Right now, the "menu" that appears when there are multiple shows involved is a file listing, via a Windows file manager-type display. I suggested that a listing that wasn't so generic would be more attractive.


    • Conclusion
       The "future features" noted are absolutely not needed to make this program a very worthwhile addition to anyone's computer. The combination of present features, price, and user friendliness make this program a must-have in my book.

       So, visit Jim's site, and get more information, if needed, and definitely consider registering this program. It's a winner! I'd appreciate any feedback you might have along the way. I can be reached at:

       Reprinted from the August 2003 issue of Boca Bits, the monthly magazine of The Boca Raton Computer Society, Inc. (BRCS). Ron Hirsch is a regular contributing editor to Boca Bits.
      Number 245 - October 2003