How Do I Make a Slideshow from My Digital Photos?

So you've seen how Macs can make a great slideshow from photos and heard it's really easy, but where do you start? We'll take you through the most common technique so you'll be amazing your friends and family in no time at all with this quick yet impressive trick.

One of the great things about the Mac is that it handles your media like music, photos and movies so effortlessly. In fact, photo managing is so built into the Mac, I can think of at least 7 different ways of making a slideshow right off the top of my head. And I'm sure there are even more that I'm not even aware of, including specialized programs.

The way I prefer to create and view a slide show with little or no effort is by using the "Play" button in iPhoto for temporary slideshows. The reason I use this technique is that almost all of the time, I show the slideshow once for a group and don't come back to it again. Instead, I'll just make another custom slideshow for the next time and group. I also use this process as a way to pare down a group of photos I just imported from a camera.

For this process, I will assume you can import photos into iPhoto, and that you know how to select just the photos you want to see. You may select them by making an album, selecting a film roll, clicking the "Last Roll" in your source list, or most likely, picking and choosing from your Library.

So let's get to it! There are 4 key steps after selecting your photos. First, click the Play button in the lower right of iPhoto in your toolbar. If you don't know your way around iPhoto, download our iPhoto Cheat Sheet and print it as a reference.

Once you click the Play button, you will see a 2 tabbed dialog box with sections for Settings and Music. If you have already configured the Settings and Music previously and like what you did, you can just hit the Play button in this box and have it start immediately. In fact, if this is the case, you can make this a 1-step process by option-clicking the first Play button and it will start right up with your last used settings, bypassing this dialog box altogether.

But first, lets take a look at our options with these settings in case you want to customize your slideshow. At the top are your Transitions options. This part probably affords you the most fun, but once the novelty of all the options wears off, you will probably be back to the Dissolve transition. Below the transition menu is a direction selector in case the transition you picked has a direction to the movement and a speed slider to choose how fast it will happen.

Below the Transition section is a field for how long you want to view each photo and then a series of check boxes for different attributes to pick from. Most of these are self evident, but I'll highlight a few key points.

First, Scaling photos to fill screen will zoom in on the photo so there are no black margins around your photo. This means your vertical photos will in effect be cropped to fit the proportion of your display.

Next, the Ken Burns effect is having your photo move and zoom slowly during the slideshow. This can add some drama and interest to an otherwise boring photo. I know, you don't have any boring photos, but keep it in mind just in case. Many people feel this effect is what puts "Mac" slideshows over the top.

Finally, you can select Show slideshow controls, but you should know that even if you don't select this option, you can see the controls during the slideshow just by moving your mouse or brushing your trackpad. Don't click randomly on the photo though, or your slide show will end early.

Music for your slideshow. Let's take a look at the Music tab now. Clicking this tab brings up just a few more options. The first is whether you want any music at all. Check this box if you do.

The top list is your sources of Music. Apple kindly gives you 11 looping tracks in the Sample Music folder that will play over and over again as long as your photos go. These instrumental tracks are done well and will fit most any topic.

You can also access your iTunes music library from here. Because the interface is small, I suggest you decide what song you want to use in iTunes, then look it up here by using the search field. Just type in a few words and your choices will be narrowed down. You can preview the song by double clicking on it or selecting, then pressing the circular play button.

You'll also notice the GarageBand icon. I suspect if your are composing music for your slideshow in GarageBand, your abilities are beyond the level of this article.

C'mon, let's see it! Once you have selected the settings you want, you can save them for playback later or just press the play button to start the slideshow now. The next slideshow you do will use these settings until you specify new ones, so you can just option-click the Play button in the toolbar to start a new one immediately. Also note, universal playback keys work for your slideshows: space bar toggles Play/Pause, left arrow = Back, right arrow = Forward.

Final note about why I use this technique to review new photos. Because the slideshow controls have some of the basic photo managing functions, including deleting photos, I can play a temporary slideshow to rate, rotate and delete new photos after I import them in an entertaining way. It's a good test of whether I want to keep the photo.

But what if you want more fine tuned control? There are two other options that give you even more control than this route. The first is to select your photos in iPhoto, then click the Create a New Slideshow button in the lower left (the one with a + sign). This process let's you choose all these options photo by photo for your slideshow. Also, this slideshow will be saved as an album to be viewed over and over again.

For even more options including text, video and sound effects, you can build your slideshow in iMovie. I do this whenever I want to really polish a slideshow to share and save as a digital keepsake.


Did this How Do I…? get you started in the right direction? Do you have any tips you want to add? Use the Comment section below to let us know.

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