How to make photo slideshows in Fireworks CS3

Fireworks CS3 has a capability to automatically build a slideshow of your image files. This is very helpful since making a slideshow script or movie from scratch could be a challenge for non-Javascript programmer or Flash animator. If you want to make professional looking slideshows with a few clicks of button then this tip is for you!

If you are an avid Fireworks user, also check out my other post on how to create animated menus in Fireworks. If you don’t have Fireworks, you can also create DVD photos slideshows in Vista using the built-in software.

To start creating a slideshow, click the Commands menu and choose Create Slideshow:

The Create Slideshow window will appear. Click Open an existing AlbumBook…to choose the folder of the pictures that you want to appear on the slideshow:

You should choose the directory of the files and click the button Select [name of folder]. In the example for this post, I choose the folder called “drumkits”:

The pictures inside your chosen folder will appear, set the captions of each picture on the Caption column. Also set the title and the description of the album on the main window:

After putting all of the captions, title and description, choose a type of player:

You can choose Flash or HTML type of output. For this example, I chose Player – Black implemented on Spry and HTML. To export your slideshow click Export Options and put the export path where you want the slideshow files to be generated:

Click Create to start the export. The output of the whole process are the HTML file called index.html, an xml file called slideshow.xml (to hold the configuration of the slideshow), scripts folder with all of the Javascript codes, and the folder to hold the images called “drumkits”:

To view the slideshow, open the index.html file. In my drumkit pictures, I saw an awesome looking slideshow that animates pretty well:

For a few simple steps, I was amazed at the quality of the slideshow that Fireworks CS3 was able to create. For folks who want to make their own professional looking slideshow, this is the perfect tool for you. Experienced web developers will also appreciate the neat HTML, Spry code structure and the XML file “manipulability” of the whole thing.

If you think this is too much work, then you can also check out this sweet portable digital photo album from Sony that does all the work for you!

Ben Carigtan writes about computers, technology and how to get the best out of them.