What is available now?

• There are a large number of slide show programs. Popular Photography recently did a comparative review of 18 of them.

• Many of them focus on visual appeal, e.g., fancy transitions between slides.

• Often the emphasis is on making it easy for the recipient of a slide show (e.g., on a CD-ROM) to view it, but this tends to mean that it is not easy for the recipient to revise or add to it.

• Few of them have the flexibility we want in handling text. (Only 5 of the 18 in the review above can handle text at all.)

• Freeware Ulead Photo Explorer 6.0 has some good tools for working with digital photos (e.g., adjusting brightness) in addition to a slide show capability. Thumber (shareware) does a good job of resizing photos and making thumbnails.