David Pogue's Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

Slideshow DVDs

Let's face it: So far in this chapter, all the cool ways to show off your prize photos—email, Web, desktop picture, and so on—involve making your audience sit, hunched and uncomfortable, around a computer screen.

Now imagine seating them instead in front of the big-screen TV in the family room, turning down the lights, cranking up the surround sound, and grabbing the DVD remote to show off the latest family photos.

You can do it. You can create DVD-based slideshows from your photo collection, complete with soundtracks and navigational menus and screens just like the DVDs you rent from Blockbuster.

• iPhoto. iDVD, another program that's part of the iLife suite (and that came preinstalled on your Mac), can take finished slideshows from iPhoto and burn them to DVD. For complete step-by-steps, download the free PDF appendix to this chapter, "Burning Slideshows in iDVD." It's on this book's "Missing CD" at www.missingmanuals.com.

• Picasa. By itself, Picasa can't turn photos into DVDs of the sort that play on a TV. But plenty of other programs can, including Nero, Photo Story, Roxio DVDit, and so on.

Tip

There's a bonus feature in iPhoto: sharing photos with other iPhoto fans on a small network. There's a bonus in Picasa, too: making collages from batches of your photos. Both of these added goodies are described in the free downloadable Appendix to this chapter. They're waiting for you on this book's "Missing CD" at www.missingmanuals.com.