Microsoft’s PowerPoint is a good choice for creating a slideshow of pictures.

You can insert pictures one at a time, but there is a better and faster way. It’s a good idea to gather up all of your photos and put them in a single folder. The following “better way” steps assume you have already done that.

1. Click the Insert tab
2. Photo Album
3. Click the File/Disk button in the Photo Album dialog pop-up
4. Navigate to the folder containing all of your images
5. Use the Ctrl+A keyboard shortcut to select all of your images, or select certain ones
6. Re-order or remove your images as needed
7. Edit your image as needed (at the right under the image)
8. Add a text box if needed
9. Adjust picture layout if needed
10. Click Create

You automatically get a slideshow with a black background, but you can change that background. To change that go to the Design tab.

Click on the Transition tab. There are a lot of transitions to choose from, and you might want to try Fade just to get started. Choose a transition if you want and click the Apply to All if you want all of the pictures to transition in this way.

If you want the pictures to automatically go to the next after a period of time you can set the number of seconds in the Transitions tab in the right side. I set it to 3 seconds. Click the Apply to All to set it to 3 seconds for all slides, if you wish.

Do you want the slide show to loop back and start again automatically? Go to the Slide Show tab. Click Set Up Slide Show. Click on the check box marked Loop continuously until ‘Esc’. Click the OK button.

Have a look at the YouTube video called Easily Create a Photo Slideshow in PowerPoint by Technology for Teachers and Students. It’s under 12 minutes long.

Keynote is Apple’s answer to Microsoft’s PowerPoint.