What is the best program for a personal portfolio?

What's a good program I can use to create a digital photography portfolio?

• I'd like to try and create a digital Portfolio of all my photography work. Currently I just have a whole heap of stuff printed out and organised in hard-copies along with a lot of photos saved on cds. I'd like to create some sort of digital portfolio presentation type of thing that I can have saved on a disk and be able to play on any computer. I was wondering what's the best sort of program to create this type of thing in? Is there a program I can download from the net to use? 'd like something that really easy to use-but creates a professional looking portfolio. Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Many Thanks.

• Answer:

  You mean like a slide show or AV presentation? The program I use for Audio Visual is Pictures to Exe. I'm sorry, but you won't get something that is easy to use to look professional. The Pro's output looks better because the program they use has all the tools and more importantly they know how to use them. They know what colours balance and work well, those that don't, what themes work well together, those that don't. They also have an idea of what 'look' they want to present. I have over a dozen different portfolios, some are soft and gentle others are gritty and gothic, some are landscapes, some are portraits, some are a mixture to show the 'spread' of my work, the one I send depends on what the customer is wanting, there is no 'one size fit's all' in this game. There's no shortcut the more tools a program has the higher the learning curve, but also much more worthwhile, Photoshop is the classic example. Your trying to create something to show off your work, if that means learning new skills, so be it, learning new skills is what separates a snapper from a pro, it's something I've done all my career of over 50 years, and I'm still learning. Learning new stuff is what keeps your photography alive and fresh and alters where you point your camera and increrases your options. One word of warning from someone who found out the hard way, CD and DVD are NOT safe storage, at some point atmospheric pollution will get at them and they will 'eat' your pics and refuse to work. The only safe storage is hard drives and even they should be duplicated. Chris