The popularity of digital cameras and DVD players is continuing to grow and a bright spark somewhere realised the humble home PC was just the thing for putting photos on a disc to view on a television.

There are several packages that offer this and the latest is Ulead's DVD PictureShow 2. By following simple steps, you can create slideshows which can be recorded onto DVD or CD-R and then played on your DVD player.

The main selling point of PictureShow 2 is to create slideshows of your digital images.

Having decided on which pictures you intend to use, you can add music in MP3 or WAV format as a backdrop.

Menus can also be added, with a choice of backgrounds, titles and buttons. Sadly, you are restricted to using supplied backdrops for the menus rather than your own snaps.

A continuously updated preview means you can see exactly what your finished project will look like as you go along.

There's room for personalisation within the slideshows too. Instead of simply switching from one picture to the next, you can add effects such as fade-in/out, dissolves and wipes to gently swap between images.

As well as adding titles to the start or end of the slideshow, you can also add them to individual pictures as captions. A narration can also be added over the music.

The title DVD PictureShow is a little misleading as users don't need a recordable DVD drive. Images can be recorded to VCD discs, which can be made in any CD-RW drive.

VCD is compatible with the majority of standalone DVD players as well.

A copy of Ulead's Photo Explorer 8 media management package - for renaming and ordering batches of pictures and for taking some of the stress out of building PictureShow presentations - comes with the software.

There's also a tool for designing labels.

If you've got a lot of photos on your PC and you want an easier and more enjoyable way of looking at them than sitting around your monitor, then PictureShow 2 is ideal.

DETAILS
Price: £35
Contact: Ulead 01327 844880
www.ulead.co.uk