What’s the right software to organize and show my digital photos?

Q. I’m retired and I travel a lot. After each trip I end up with hundreds of pictures. I would like to organize them by trip and put them in the correct time sequence.

I would like to insert some section breaks that would have a title indicating the next pictures are Yellowstone, for example. Then I’d like to be able to annotate on a picture what it is. Like “Upper Falls Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.” Then I’d like to be able to run a slideshow or put them in a digital picture frame with all the breaks and annotations.

Trying to use PowerPoint is hard with having to paste each one in, size, and put in text boxes. You can get a slideshow but can’t put into a picture frame. Do you have any suggestions on software I can use to create this album, and picture frames which will display pictures correctly?

— Jerry Wattier

A. Yes, I hear you. PowerPoint is for slideshows, not for organizing a photo collection.

You can find a listing of several relatively powerful programs for organizing a large collection of digital photos at st.news/photosoftware.

Bear in mind, though, that not all of the photo-management programs include slideshow-creation capabilities. One exception is Adobe Slideshow Elements.

If you’re looking solutions that don’t carry price tags, I believe you’ll need to split those two functions — organizing your digital photos and creating slideshows.

Q. Can you avoid updates, as I read online how many problems result from these updates? Is Windows 10 Pro better in many ways than Windows Home?

— B.K. Johnson

A. Yes, you can delay but not entirely block Windows Updates. You can find step-by-step instructions for controlling Windows Updates here: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-stop-updates-installing-automatically-windows-10.

I have to add, though, that it’s not a good idea to fend off updates for long. Most updates include not only new features but important security fixes that address system vulnerabilities.

As for why you might want Windows 10 Pro rather than the Home version, it’s mostly about security and enterprise-level tools. If you’re not in an organization, the main feature of Windows 10 Pro that you might want is Bitlocker encryption, which protects your data if your computer is lost or stolen.

Q. We’ve used LastPass since 2014. From time to time, our LP extension in the Firefox toolbar disappears. We uninstall LP, reinstall, then go to the Firefox menu bar to customize the toolbar by drag and drop, moving the LP extension listed there to the menu overflow. And voilà! It appears in the toolbar.

This time, the LP extension doesn’t appear in the customize list. So, we removed LP and reinstalled several times, to no avail. From looking at a few LP-related blogs, others have had these issues. A couple listed some very technical stuff and declared success. We aren’t that technical.

Do you know how we can get the LP extension back? We’ve contacted LP; they recommended that we uninstall and reinstall. Since I reported that as unsuccessful, we haven’t heard back from them.

— Gina Bourgeois and Steve Colmar

A. Imagine having five or six contractors work on your home at the same time. What are the chances that none of them will get in another’s way?

Firefox is one of my favorite browsers. And, yes, I use LastPass with it. I’ve never had the issues you report. But an internet search does turn up users reporting similar problems. No one has found the specific cause of the problem, but it seems that if you install an earlier version of LastPass and disable updates you may fix the problem. You’ll find step-by-step instructions at st.news/lastpassfirefox

Alternatively, the culprit may be another one of your installed Firefox add-ons. You might try disabling all add-ons except Firefox just to see if it works properly. If it does, add the others back in one by one until the problem recurs.