With access to digital cameras and scanners at my office, I find myself wanting to create a "slide show" every now and then so I can share digital pictures with friends and family via email or disc. My friends and family always enjoy a prepared slide show more than a stack of JPEG files, and I usually have fun making them.

While there are several ways to make a slide show on your Mac, some ways, I think, are better than others. The two most popular programs for creating slide shows, I'd venture to guess, are Microsoft PowerPoint and AppleWorks. And while those are both fine solutions if you already own the software and know how to use it, they are both way-overkill if all you want do is put together a quick and dirty little slide show and you don't want to spend a lot of dough.

And so, after much exhaustive research, I will now reveal not one, but two easy-to-use, inexpensive solutions for making Mac slide shows. The first is Apple's iMovie, which is extremely inexpensive -- it will cost you nothing. The second, LiveSlideShow, from Totally Hip Software, will run you a mere $30. But if you make a lot of slide shows, it's unique features may make it worth every penny to you.

Let's start with the freebie. iMovie is, of course, Apple's popular QuickTime movie-making software. It's usually used to edit movies. So, while you may not have thought of iMovie as slide show making software before, I'm here to tell you it can easily be used that way. And, of course, you can't beat the price.

Making a slide show with iMovie couldn't be easier. First import your pictures (in GIF, JPEG, or PICT format) using iMovie's Import command. Now drag them into order in the timeline and set the image duration for each one -- 5 seconds is usually about right. Now add some transition effects, and some background music if you like. Finally, Export the movie to QuickTime. It's quick, it's easy, and best of all, it's free.

So what makes LiveSlideShow worth 30 dollars when you can make a slide show for free with iMovie? Probably the biggest difference is interactivity. With iMovie, your only choice is to create a QuickTime movie that plays from start to finish; with LiveSlideShow you can create an interactive QuickTime movie that includes buttons that let the viewer manually advance the slides, jump to the beginning or end of the slide show, or jump to their browser and a specific URL.

In addition to the ability to add navigational buttons to your slide show, LiveSlideShow does two other things better than iMovie. First, it lets you attach and animate text captions for each image quickly and easily. Second, it saves its slide shows as somewhat smaller QuickTime movie files than iMovie.

Both iMovie and LiveSlideShow are well-designed and easy to use. And both can create great looking slide shows quickly and near-effortlessly. LiveSlideShow offers interactive navigation and easily-animated text-over-graphics; iMovie lets you lay down a background music or voice-over track for your entire show (LiveSlideShow limits you to adding a single sound or voice-over to each slide). Either program, in my opinion, is a fine choice.

The good news is that you can try them both for free, then decide for yourself. You'll find a LiveSlideShow demo at: http://www.totallyhip.com/Products/
LiveSlide Show/downloads.html,
and you can download a free copy of iMovie at:
http://itools.mac.com/itoolsmain.html.

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