Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Creating a Slideshow

I made my first slideshow last week and was amazed just how easy it was!  I used Adobe Lightroom 4 to make mine, but there are lots of other software choices you could use to make one. Here are a few tips on getting your photos ready for a slideshow.

First- gather the images you want in the show and create a folder for them. You can choose images with a common theme, photos from a particular time period, season, or event, whatever you want to showcase as a set. I made mine with flower images I'd made over the last year. I sized my images to around 1200px on the long side, and arranged them in a sequence I found pleasing, being sure that the colors, shapes and types of flowers were varied in the sequence. I numbered the photos to be sure the order would be saved.


I made a title slide, and an end slide too.



Next, I needed to choose the music for my show. There are lots of Royalty Free Music sites where you can license and download music for your show. I wanted my slideshow to be between 4-5 minutes long, so that was one of the factors I considered when choosing music to purchase. I also wanted music that went well with the type of images in my show. In this case, the entire show was going to be flower photographs so I wanted music that was soft, and simple in nature.

Once I had the music selected and my images ready to go, I imported them to Lightroom 4. Here's a great tutorial from Adobe on the rest of the process:  Slideshows in Lightroom 4

And here is my finished slideshow on YouTube:  2013 Flowers by Kathleen Clemons

I hope you'll make one too!
Kathleen