HTTPhotos

We approach most digital photo software with a healthy dose of skepticism, because many of these programs end up being more trouble than they're worth, with confusing interfaces and mediocre results. We're pleased to announce that that is not the case with HTTPhotos. This is one of the easiest ways we've come across to create attractive, professional-looking slideshows, and users can host their slideshows--of up to 100 images--on the Internet for free. What's not to love?

HTTPhotos has a sleek and intuitive interface, with each step in the slideshow process arranged in tabs. In the first tab, users select the images they want to include, either by choosing individual images from a folder or importing an entire directory of images at once. The second tab includes tools for touching up each image in the slideshow, including sliders for brightness and contrast, a cropping tool, and a handful of effects such as blurring, sharpening, and conversion to black and white. In the third tab, users choose from six slideshow templates; there's one HTML template, one Java template, and four Flash templates, and all of them are attractive and easy to navigate. In the final tab, users can either save the slideshow to their hard drive or upload it to the Internet using their DigicamSoft account. We didn't have an account, but it was easy and free to create one that will host up to 100 images; users can host up to 10,000 images for a modest annual fee. The program doesn't come with much in the way of documentation, but it's easy enough to figure out without a Help file. Overall, we were quite impressed with HTTPhotos; it's definitely one of the easiest ways to create great-looking slideshows that we've seen.

HTTPhotos installs a desktop icon without asking and leaves a Start menu item and a folder behind upon removal.