Make a Slideshow

Seasons of Lake Miriam

In November 2007, I bought a point-and-shoot digital camera. (I still own this Nikon P5100.) I was living at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center and excited to capture some of the gorgeous wilderness landscapes. Just before New Year’s, I had an idea to take daily photos of Lake Miriam while facing the four cardinal directions.

Without delay, I started shooting four photos a day, varying the time of day depending on convenience, and making a habit of consistently visiting two or three locations where I could easily see the four directions. Surprisingly, though, I never made a slideshow to showcase my creativity.

Easiest Slideshow Ever

Looking for the simplest route? If you organize your pictures in an album in Photos, you can simply click Slideshow. Pick a theme, choose music if you like, and press play. For nothing fancy, you might actually find it plenty fancy.

Custom Slideshow Project

Let’s add a little complexity, though, so we can eventually share the project more widely. Assuming you’ve ordered your pictures in an album, you can visit the album and choose File > Create > Slideshow > Photos. In short order, you’ll arrive in the slideshow builder with all your pictures from the album.

Music & Timings

As you saw above, the total length of the default show was almost 90 minutes with slide timing of 3 seconds per photo plus a 1 second transition. That’s a tad long for me. I have two choices:

1. In the Duration section, I can choose a specific length per slide not less than 1 second.
2. In the Music section, I can choose one or more songs from my library and then fit the slideshow to the length of the song(s). With a transition, the total length must accommodate at least 1.5 seconds per picture.

I pick the second option. I have a great selection of seasonal music! It’s super easy, too, to search my library for keywords, preview tracks, and arrange them in a playlist.

As always, feel free to explore all the other setting choices among Themes, Music, and Duration, shown on the right. Though Apple doesn’t let you customize every last detail, there are enough possibilities to make something delightful.

Add Text

Photos doesn’t offer to use photo titles as captions or any similar automation, so adding text to slides can be a tedious process. I recommend adding it sparingly since most of the focus will be on the pictures.

To do so, simply select a slide, click the plus in the bottom right, and choose Add Text. Then, edit the Default Text as you wish. On the slide selector, you’ll see a T frame on slides containing text. Select it and press Delete to remove the text on the associated slide.

Photos will automatically make text bold on the first slide and normal on the rest, but you can change the typeface and style using the standard font controls, which are hidden in the Edit menu.

Export & Share

When you’re satisfied with your whole show, click Export on the toolbar and save a video of your slideshow at your desired quality.

You can subsequently upload your video to the platform of your choice to share it more widely. Or, you can import it back into Photos and share it via an iCloud Shared Album.