Cascading Slides 2.6

Cascading Slides is a free photo album and media browser. The application allows you to add your photos and create as many albums as you want. Then you can use your mouse or keyboard to browse through your photos. You can view them in their original size or in full-screen mode. There is even a slideshow feature that you can access by simply clicking the play button on the top toolbar.

Adding images to the application and creating albums is really easy. All you have to do is tell Cascading Slides where your images are. You can add captions to each image.

There is one particular feature that is very interesting to me: encryption. When I added my first few pictures, the application asked me whether I wanted to encrypt them or not. By encrypting your images Cascading Slides will password-protect them and erase the original photos from your hard drive. This prevents another user from accessing the source files. But you have to be careful not to forget the password that you assigned to them. Luckily, the app lets you add a password security question that will help you remind it.

In my testing I added a few high-resolution images into a new album and encrypted them. I didn't experience any slow-downs while browsing my pictures, even at full screen.

There are only two negative things about this app. First, the user interface looks old, even the folder browser looks like something out of Windows 95. Second, there aren't any sharing options. Most similar apps let you post to Facebook or Flickr or even e-mail photos straight from the album view.