Learn iPhoto Week: Understand your photo slideshow settings

iPhoto’s slideshow feature is great; with just a few clicks you can choose your photos and create a stunning show of your favourite snaps. It’s incredibly simple, and with pre-set themes it’s just as easy to give each slideshow you create an individual look and feel. But what if you want more control than simply just clicking on a slideshow theme? It’s all there under the slideshow settings button. From there you can apply quick effects to images, choose their transition, slide length and much more. There’s a fair bit to get your head around, with all the different parameters and transition options, but we’ll take you through all of the key features in iPhoto’s slideshow settings and get you showing off your shots in a professional way.

Step 1: Start a slideshow

Find the photos you want, click Create in the bottom- right of iPhoto’s window, then click Slideshow. A new slideshow should appear in the sidebar.

Step 2: Fire up the settings

Once you’ve created your slideshow, you’re presented with an editing window with the current slide as the main view. Click on the settings icon to get tweaking.

Step 3: Ditch the defaults

Under the ‘All Slides’ tab, click on the arrow icons to change the amount of time each slide plays for. iPhoto’s default of 3.5 seconds tends to be a little fast.

Step 4: Scale ’em up

Check the ‘Scale photos to fill screen’ option to ensure there won’t be lots of blank space in your slides when transitioning between landscape and portrait photos.

Step 5: Edit the individual

Click on the ‘This Slide’ tab to bring up settings for the individual slide that’s highlighted in the scrollbar along the top. This allows for more detailed tweaks.

Step 6: Transition tweaks

Click on the Transitions drop-down box to choose a transition between the current photo and the next; varied transitions make for a more engaging slideshow.

Step 7: Check it out

If you’re unsure of how different transitions will work between photos in sequence, click on the Preview button to take a look at the slideshow in action.

Step 8: Slower speeds

Use individual slide times to emphasise your favourite or most poignant photos. Just click on the arrows or enter a time in seconds to set how long a slide is shown for.

Step 9: A quick effect

Click on any of the effects within slide settings to apply them to the current slide. You can double-click on any slide to edit it, but this is great for a quick fix.

Click on the image below to zoom in and view the annotations.

This tutorial is the fourth in our Learn iPhoto Week series; for more articles just like this, visit the Learn iPhoto Week tag. At the end of the week, we’ll be giving away a prize to one lucky person who gets in touch with a question or problem related to iPhoto on Mac or iOS. To get involved, simply tweet your question, plus the hashtag #LearniPhotoWeek, to @iCreateMagazine or post on our Facebook wall.