Rick,
what you do is the following:
1) Install Picasa for free, let Picasa run over your image files
2) Install highslide, the original version, or better the one from Highslide JS, free for non-commercial use
3) select a file in Picasa for the template, click 'edit' 'select all' and then 'folder' 'export as HTML' You then immediately see the result on your browser and can check whether this is what you want. If you don't seee it on your browser, you go to 'Picasa exports' find your template, click 'open under xy-browser' and then you will find some text. Then click onto 'index' and here we are. So far this thing is only on your computer.
4) To make this visible to the world you have to have a web-site. With any FTP program you load the fileld template onto your web-site and give it a name there. Thsi cold also be any google or similar website under your name. Now it shold be visible. Go to your website like
http://mywebsite/newtemplatename and you should see it. If not, push the refresh button of your browser.
5) Write the link her so we can all see what you were struggling with.
6) to enhance the whole thing go to google 'Higslide JS' and load the general version. Then go to your Picasa file and write a header for your file and some captions for the picutures. The results should be like this:
http://walter-pall.de/floweringprunus_nr__2.jpg.dir/index.html
Helpful?