How To Make Stunning Slide Shows On A Mac.

I’m a sucker for slides shows. Web page, QuickTime movie, Ken Burns effect, whatever.

Digital photography makes photo slide shows a thing of beauty. So it is with the new, improved JAlbum on the Mac.

Slide shows on the Mac could not be any easier, though they could look much better when transferred to a web page album.

Albums allow us to create a gallery page with links to individual photos. This is perfect for creating a CD loaded with photo albums, or upload the albums to a web page.

Fortunately for Mac users, there are some great utilities that do just that, do it quickly, easily, painlessly, and the end result is elegant, professional, and free.

Tops on my list of tools for slide show photo albums is… not iPhoto. It’s JAlbum, followed closely by Galerie. Even the not-quite-free Instant Gallery gets a smiling nod.

Creating superbly elegant photo albums could not be much easier. How easy? Easy as easy gets. I use iPhoto for my photos. Select the photos you want, export them to a folder on your Mac’s desktop.

Drag and drop the folder of photos onto JAlbum. Select a “skin” and skin “style” for the photo album.

Click the Make Album button. A few seconds later you have a fully functional, attractive photo album that’s perfect for web use, or to be burned to a CD for family and friends.

The latest version of JAlbum sports more “skins” to choose from for a variety of photo album looks, and “styles” vary the color and background combinations of each. Ron, Alex, and I agree that the Chameleon skin from Laszlo Molnar is the best and raises the bar for quality photo album styles.

What about customization, Kate? What if I want to add comments, change photo file names, re-arrange the order of photos, change the number of columns and rows on a page, sharpen the photos, change the thumbnail or photo size and dimensions, add links to the original photos, add watermarks for protection, create an automated slide show, and so on?

What if? Why not? JAlbum has custom settings for all those and many more, plus each “skin” has their own set of customized settings to the resulting photo album can be a true reflection of your photos.

Creating that first profesional looking photo album took just a couple of minutes. That provides inspiration to create more photo albums. Remember, these can be uploaded to your family web site, or burned to a CD for others to enjoy.

What can you create in minutes using JAlbum? Check out my example photo album, created in about two minutes. Right after Macworld 2007, I went back to Las Vegas with Bambi for a couple of days. I don’t get to Vegas too often so we hit the strip, shopped, had lunch, shopped, then dinner, shopped, and along the way I shot a few dozen photos. While we shopped.

What do you think? Sweet? And JAlbum is free. What do you use to create photo albums? iPhoto? Galerie? JAlbum? Something else? Share your experience in the Comments section below.