looking for photo album/slideshow software

I'm looking for software that will allow me to make a slideshow out of the old family photos

My dad sent me a box of slides (this covers a thirty year period of picture taking), and several old photo albums. I've been patiently and painstakingly been scanning them in, tweaking them etc. over the past 3 years or so

I'm at the point where I want to start moving them onto cd's, burning copies and sending them out to the family

I would like to put them into an easy to use "slideshow" format that would NOT require anyone downloading or installing additional software to view it - essentially a stand-alone, self-executing slideshow presentation

cost is an issue - so ideally I would like a "freeware" program, or one that comes in under $50.00 to buy

any recommendations?

Adobe photoshop album starter kit. Free and seems to work good

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopalbum/starter.html

It exports your photos to a PDF format that everyone can view.

Use a pdf (ugh) format (everybody has acrobat) or could use an HTML format (everybody has a browser). In the former case you need a program to produce the pdf. You can use even a text editor to produce html and a photo display set of pages (with thumbnails) is not a big deal.

Unless you use an assembly format that everybody can handle, then you would have to include SW on the CD and that means it would have to be free or super cheap. A browse thumbnails would be nice --- I don't know if such a program exists. There are plenty of free viewers, but with thumbnails I don't know. Check download.com, zdnet, tucows, pcworld, sourceforge, etc.

I like the HTML idea best. It allows for the most tailoring and should be pretty simple. Of course without having any "server side" functionality there are lots of cute things that you can't do. Still for the purposes of a CD where the content is fixed, this isn't a big deal.

The link above seems like an idea too.

A simple HTML/javascript template to handle multiple slide shows is also not a big deal and you might be able to produce all the array declarations using a little program that you run on the photo directories. A lead in page with thumbnails of the (first slide of) different shows (which you can walk though) and a popup window with big pictures (which you can also walk though) would suffice. Add in the ability to switch between shows in the popup window and you are home (I think). If you have a lot of slide shows you might need to be able to load a new batch of thumbnails on the lead in page, but again this is not rocket science.

of all the stuff I have, and it has a slideshow function.

Problem is, I've never gotten the slideshow to work. Could just be me, though.

My hubby and I use it all the time for just what you want it for. You can put the run program on the CD so the slide show will just start up and go when your relatives put the CD in their computers. You can even add text to the photos so they will know what they are looking at.