Ulead Dvd Pictureshow Digital Camera Suite

the disadvantage of digital cameras is that you don't have a handful of photos to pass around the room. Unless you want to print your pictures out yourself, show them to friends and family means crowding round the pc, but if you've got a dvd player you can see your photos on tv instead by creating a video cd.

dvd picture show digital camera suite includes everything you need. Download photos from your digital camera, organise them in photo explorer 7 pro, then create a video cd or dvd with dvd picture show and add a finishing touch with a custom label in photo express 4. These are separate programs, but they all have a switch menu for loading the other programs.

photo explorer is a good way to organise your digital photos, which you'll need to do once the pictures start to build up, although it does need a lot of memory to cope with large folders of pictures. You can do simple editing of your photos in photo explorer, correcting red eye, brightness and contrast, colour and focus, or for more options you can turn to the tools in photo express, which also lets you add text to photos and warp it into interesting shapes. photo express has a lot of tools and templates for turning your photos into projects with borders and backgrounds.

dvd picture show takes you through creating dvds and video cds of your photos, step by step. It automatically resizes your photos to fit on tv screens but you get plenty of options for picking pictures in the thumbnail view, rotating any that are the wrong way round, choosing how long each image is on screen for and setting background music. You can also pick a template for the on-screen menu. This is one of the simplest tools for making dvds and video cds of your favourite images, and bundling it with the other tools means you'll be able to make the most of your images first. --mary branscombe