Image organizer recommendations

[ccm]

Hello,

First off, photography is not a serious hobby for me. I am your typlical vacation, birthday, etc photograhper. That being said, please take into consideration my lack of photo knowledge. I am looking for some software to help me better utalize my pictures. My needs (or wants) are:

   Simplicity
   Ability to perform minor editing
   Ability to manage my photo files
   Slide Show- I want to be able to:
      Produce slide show on a CD or DVD that can be viewed on a TV
      Have the slide show pictures show in a specified order
      Add music if possible
  Inexpensive
I use Windows XP as an operating system and do not take pictures in RAW format.

I have used Adobe Photoshop Album Starter version 3 and downloaded Picasa. Neither of these softwares shows the slide show in the proper order. I have tried changing the file names in Picasa but when you do this it changes the file names in all Picasa locations which can cause problems.

I am considering downloading Adobe Elements but before I do that I wanted to find out if it would meet my needs. My internet research does not answer my questions and I felt someone on this forum would have the answers.

Any recommendations or advice that you can offer will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[mouser]

I don't think this review is going to answer the question for you since you have specific slide show needs which may require a specialty program, but you may want to look at this long review by DC member nudone first:
https://www.donation...icsViewer/index.html

[Darwin]

Two not covered in the review that are worth a look are: Photo Collector from Collectorz.com shows great promise and there ARE stirrings indicating that they MIGHT release an update soon (but it hasn't been touched in over 18 months)  and exifPro.

Also, check out this thread: Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?

[cmpm]

Microsoft's Photo Story 3 may do it for you.
It has the ability for sound of different flavors.
Free also-

http://www.microsoft...tostory/default.mspx

But for organizing, Picasa is the fast and can organize in a few ways.
Plus the rest of the ones mentioned in mouser's link are worth a look.

[Grorgy]

While its been a while since i've played with it, I think you could probably make the CD or DVD with MS Movie Maker, the free one that comes with xp.  Just add the pictures in the desired order, add music or a voice over whatever then burn it to a DVD with some burning software, I dont know if movie maker would do that.  Just a thought anyway, and you cant go to far wrong, its all free, just a bit of time.

[Lutz_]

Studioline Photo is very good and comparatively easy to learn:

http://studioline.ne...-classic/default.htm

Sign up for the newsletter.  It has about 40% discounts every few months.

The free Studioline version is already very capable, too  (Photo Basic).

[Dormouse]

I see you have already asked the question at dpreview and it is worth doing a search there for the many relevant threads.

When I was looking a few years ago, I narrowed it down to 3 - IdImager, iMatch and Picasa. I'd already had a copy of Photoshop Elements, but, while it was pretty good as a photo editor, I found it very limited as a DAM prog and never used it as such.

Lightroom is a new arrival since I was looking, but you couldn't accuse it of being inexpensive; and Adobe's policies tend to make the expense fairly continuous.

Microsoft took over iView, which I thought was too expensive anyway.

There are others, such as ThumbsPlus, which some people like but I've never looked in detail atthem for one reason or another and would not like to comment.

IdI does everything you asked for including a slideshow with music, but it does cost $69.
Picasa has the advantage of being free, but you have already dismissed it.
iMatch is a very competent and fast database, but I've never heard anyone describe it as simple.

[tomos]

(IDimager) does everything you asked for including a slideshow with music, but it does cost $69.

-Dormouse (September 12, 2008, 10:01 AM)

there is a free version but I dont know it's limitations
wow, there was a free version

[Eno]

I use Proshow gold for slide shows, its not cheap but seems to do a lot and it works 
I had problems with slide shows with Adobe Photoshop Elements and it kept crashing 

http://www.photodex....roducts/proshowgold/