Image Slideshow

Hello all, I have a few quick questions. Has anyone had any success with NextGen? I have it working but only with JW Image Rotator and I don’t want to pay the $84 for the license. Is there a way of making it work without the player? Or does anyone know of an image gallery that they can recommend. All I am trying to accomplish is for 5 images to rotate. For example, I want images one to fade or transition somehow into image 2 and so on.

Thanks in advance,
Kevin