Creating Photo CDs for Clients

Have you ever had a need to give a client photos on a CD? We do this for all of our selling clients and many buying clients. Sellers like to have a copy of photos and virtual tour as a keepsake of their home their leaving and buyers like to have a photos CD to show their friends and family. This is a product opportunity for Photographers.

The way the photo CD should work is all one should have to do is stick the CD in the drive and the photo display interface should automatically be displayed. A CD that works this way is called an “auto-run” CD.

The easiest way to create an auto-run photo CD is to put all the photos you want to have on the CD into a HTML photo gallery. You can make a HTML photo gallery with Photoshop Elements, Photoshop or many other graphics programs. One popular gallery program is a Flash gallery called SimpleViewer available for free at: www.airtightinteractive.com/simpleviewer.

Create the photo gallery in a separate folder. To make the CD auto-run you’ll need an auto-run utility. There are many but the one I use and like is called AutoRun III by www.typhoonsoftware.com for $49. Once the photo gallery is created in a folder, run AutoRun III and tell it which file to execute to display the photo gallery (usually index.html or something similar). After AutoRun is finished all you have to do is copy the folder that has the photo gallery and special AutoRun files in it to a CD and you’re done. Now the photo gallery will start up when you put the CD in a PC CD player.

For CDs I use little mini Pocket CDs called “Cool Pocket CD-R” by Memorex. They are 3.25 inches in diameter and will hold 210 Meg. I put a photo of the front of the home on the CD cover and a sticker on the back that has all my business card info on it.