I introduced this new command on the old VirtualClues blog (I'll have to get another one of those put back up) last year. It now ships with Fireworks CS3. The Slideshow Command creates image galleries from your selected files or folders and then publishes them in either Flash or SPRY/HTML players. There are several templates (players) from which to choose from. Actually, I'm most excited about the SPRY format and hope future versions of Fireworks ships with more player options that can be more easily customized inside of Fireworks. At any rate, this is a powerful command that will come in handy when you need to put together a quick portfolio or gallery for you, or your client's images.

Using the Slideshow Command is fairly straight forward.

Go to Command > Create Slideshow

I've selected a folder on my computer that has several photos in it. I could add other albums but for this example, I'll just use the one Album.

AlbumBook Properties is where you define what the entire Slideshow is about. For example, if this were your portfolio, you could put your name here and a general description of the portfolio. This is also where the Player is selected. I choose the Black (SPRY/HTML) player for my slideshow.

Each Album can further have its own description, this is found under Album Properties.

Albums can also have Filters applied to them such as: Auto Level, Blur, Covert to Greyscale, Convert to Sepia Tone, Invert and Sharpen.

Under Slideshow Properties you can choose what transition effect to use for your slideshow. There are several to choose from.

Finally to Export the Slideshow click on the browse button (...) to choose the Export path. The Width and Height of the images and thumbnails are defined here as well as the Image quality. You want to make sure that you have Export images and Generate XML selected.

The command will create the folders containing the images and the scripts to run your slideshow. All you need to do is upload the slideshow folder to the web and your set to go.

Click Here for my Slideshow Example (SPRY/HTML)