Section 89. Create an iPhoto Album or Slideshow

89. Create an iPhoto Album or Slideshow

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

45 Sign Up for .Mac

88 Import Photos From a Digital Camera

SEE ALSO

92 Create an iPhoto Book

93 Create an Online Photo Album

iPhoto was designed to operate much in the same way that iTunes doesdata sources in the pane on the left, media on the right, organized according to the intrinsic searching and sorting criteria in the media itself. Just as music in iTunes is organized by artist, album, and genre , photos in iPhoto are browsed by their thumbnails, by import date, by keywords, or by film roll. And just as you can create playlists of your favorite songs in iTunes so that you can play them back or burn onto a CD, in iPhoto you can create their equivalent: photo albums .

An album is like a playlist of pictures. You can drag as many photos as you want into an album, and you can sort them any way you want. An album can consist of photos from as many different film rolls as you want. This means you can create albums for landscape photography, family friends , holidays, Little League games , baby picturesanything you fancy. You can even create Smart Albums that automatically contain photos matching certain criteria you specify, such as certain text appearing in any of the descriptive fields, a certain star rating, or a certain import date range. (Hold down Option while creating a new album to create a Smart Album.)

89. Create an iPhoto Album or Slideshow

A photo album is also a convenient way to group photos for a slideshow. iPhoto allows you to start a slide presentation at any time, using the photos that are selected (if any) or all the photos in the current iPhoto window. You can start a slideshow using your entire Photo Library or by manually selecting the photos you want before starting the presentation. But the simplest way is to create a photo album containing just the photos you want to display, and then simply click the Play Slideshow button.

1.	Create a New Album Click the New Album button at the bottom-left corner of the iPhoto window. This button can also be used to create Smart Albums, books, or slideshows, by choosing from the New menu in the sheet that appears.
2.	Name the New Album In the New Album sheet that appears, enter a name for the new album. Click OK to create the album in the Source pane. TIP You can rename an album at any time by double-clicking its title, typing a new name, and pressing Return .
3.	Drag Photos into the Album Populate the album with photos from your Photo Library . Drag photos one by one to the album icon in the Source pane; you can also select multiple pictures (press Command or Shift while clicking), and drag them in groups to the album. This is much easier than pasting photos into a book using those little sticky-corner doodads, isn't it? NOTE When you add photos to an album, you're not actually moving the photos out of your Library as with playlists in iTunes, you're just creating a list of references to pictures in your Library . The original picture remains in your Library so you can add it to multiple albums if you want. You can't add the same photo multiple times to an album; if you're not sure whether or not you've added a photo into an album already, go ahead and drag itit will just snap back into place if it's already in the album.
4.	Create a Slideshow from the Album First select the album you just created, and then click the Slideshow button at the bottom of the iPhoto screen to create a slideshow from that album. iPhoto switches to Edit Slideshow mode, showing you all the photos in the album in a scrolling bar at the top, the current photo in the main window, and a toolbar of configuration options at the bottom.
5.	Customize Slideshow Settings At any time, you can click Play to start the slideshow with its current, automatically set options. You can also, however, fine-tune the slideshow to display exactly the way you want, with any of a variety of elaborate effects. For example, start by dragging photos back and forth in the bar at the top to change their display order. One by one, select the photos from the bar at the top, or step through them using the Left and Right arrows; you can then specify an Effect to apply on-the-fly (make the photo black-and-white or sepia-tone), and a Transition effect to use in switching to the next photo in the slideshow. The Ken Burns effect , named for the PBS documentarian made famous by his signature pans over Civil War photos, lets you set up similar pan effects. First select the Ken Burns Effect check box, then drag the photo and use the Zoom slider to set how the photo should look at the beginning of the pan, and then click the Start/End switch and use the same pan and zoom controls to set the endpoint of the pan. TIP Click the Preview button to see how the photo will display and how the transition to the next photo will look. KEY TERM Ken Burns Effect A technique for specifying a combined pan and zoom effect over a still photo; used in iPhoto slideshows and iMovie. The Adjust icon opens a palette that allows you to fine-tune the transition settings, including the photo's duration and special options for certain kinds of transitions, as well as the duration of the transition itself. Finally, pick a song to play in the background of your slideshow using the Music icon, which brings up a navigator sheet that shows you your iTunes Library and all your playlists. Use the Search box to zero in on a song by name, and the Play button to preview it. Click OK to finalize your music selection. TIP If you don't want any music to play along with your slideshow, deselect the Play music during slideshow check box. When you're satisfied with your global slideshow settings, switch to any other view in iPhoto, such as your Library . Your slideshow settings are saved as soon as you adjust them.
6.	Play a Slideshow You can view your slideshow at any time by selecting it in the Source pane and clicking Play . The screen fades to black, and then the slideshow begins, featuring all the album's photos in the configuration you painstakingly defined. Press Escape to quit the slideshow.