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I'm about to burn a disc of photos, a lot of them. I'd like to provide a standalone executable on a disk that when launched would play a full-screen random slideshow of all the images on the disc. Recursively across folders.

Perhaps it will also be an autoplay action. Preferably the app would also be free.

What Google turns out are either applications for making slideshow videos from the images, or making huge executables with images inside them, or are shareware, or require installation.

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  • I'm not using Windows, so I have no clear recommendation. But I can give you a hint for your Google-Search-hunt: keywords "image viewer" and "portable apps". Such a portable app you could just include with the disk, and start it using an autorun.inf – probably passing the folder containing the images as argument. So this search brings up Cornice, which seems to be exaclty what you're after.
    – Izzy ♦
    May 23, 2015 at 12:11
  • The built-in image viewer on Windows is capable of displaying slideshows, no need of an external program. The only thing I don't know is to how to open it automatically, maybe Google can help there.
    – Alejandro
    May 24, 2015 at 1:28
  • You can start Windows integrated PhotoViewer via command line and thus via a CMD. Write a batch with a loop and call rundll32 "%ProgramFiles%\Windows Photo Viewer\PhotoViewer.dll", ImageView_Fullscreen path_to_image every 5 seconds or so with the next image. Integrate this batch in your autorun.inf on your CD
    – nixda
    Sep 20, 2015 at 22:45

4 Answers 4

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You could include on your disc 1 java-script file and 1 html file then use them to view the pictures in the users web browser, (whatever their platform).

There are a large number of free java script image slider programs out there but one good example is sliderman.

  • Free
  • Small the demo, (excluding images), are about 40 kBytes
  • Really portable - will work on most machines that have a reasonably modern web browser, (not just windows machines but Mac & Linux also).
  • The licence says that you cannot modify the code without giving your modifications back and that you must include the copyright and licence in any distributions but other than that you are free to use it as you like - my paraphrase
  • No Adware, etc., that I can see
  • Nothing to install that most machines do not have alreay.
  • Multiple transitions
  • Easy to use.
  • Small, the zipped demos file is only 1.4 MB
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I recently answered a similar question here.

I believe FastStone Image Viewer answers your requirements (stand alone, free for personal use, slideshow) plus more.

Read my post above for more information on FastStone Image Viewer and some of the additional features this product supports. (I am not affiliated with this free product, I just love using it).

The following is an excerpt from the documentation:

- FastStone Image Viewer has two completely separate slide show creation functions:
One of these functions is called the Slideshow 
(covered in this section of this tutorial)

- The second of these functions is called the Slide Show Builder 
(covered in the next section of this tutorial call Create And Save A Slide Show)

...

Here is a screenshot of the slideshow dialog:

faststone slideshow dialog

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Apologies in advance: I'm not a Windows user, so I couldn't test this solution. But as it sounds like the perfect match, I decided to answer anyhow.

A little Google-Fu turned up Cornice, which seems to be exactly what you're after:

Cornice is a cross-platform image viewer written in Python + wxPython + PIL. It doesn't pretend to be complete, fast, or even useful, but I like it and it is the viewer I use on both Linux and Windows.

(Source: Cornice project page)

Cornice is available as "portable app" – which means you can download the .zip file and unpack it to the disk. Then it can be run without installation required.

Now let's see how it matches your requirements:

  • standalone exe on a disk: Yes. It's portable, requires no installation, and can be run directly from the disk.
  • when launched would play a full-screen random slideshow of all the images on the disc: Here I'm not sure if it can be automated. As image viewers usually accept at least an image as parameter on launch, this could be achieved e.g. using the autorun.inf feature, calling the app passing the directory or at least one of the images in there as parameter. Might require a little user-interaction to start the slideshow then.
  • an autoplay action: As described, using autorun.inf. I'd recommend placing the action (full command with parameter) inside a batch file next to it, to provide an easy action for users having autorun turned off.

Added plus is the cross-platform feature, so your disks would even be usable the very same way for Linux users. See the project page for more details, including some screenshots.

One little drawback: Development of this app seems to have stopped. I'm not sure whether that's temporarily or completely. If that bothers you, try above "Google-Fu" link for alternatives.

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burn to cd... makes me want to think you are wanting a "CD" or "DVD" that you can just insert into any old cd/dvd player and have slide show pictures. vs needing a computer.

nero comes to mind possibly. it has been so long since cd/dvd player days. that i no longer remember the "keyword search terms", i want to say possibly DVDFab? might have a slide show doing, of inserting a bunch of photos into it. and then burning to cd/dvd and all ya do is insert into dvd player heck even computer dvd player and things should start going through the pictures.

kodak (company) for thier cameras tended to have some sort of generic application that came with cameras. i want to say "easy share".

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