11.2. Exporting an Instant Slideshow

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11.1. Two Kinds of Slideshows

Fortunately, iPhoto makes creating the movie as simple as creating the original show itself. You just have to know which buttons to click.

As Chapter 7 makes clear, iPhoto 5 offers two different ways of creating a slide-show :

  • The instant slideshow. When you click the Play Slideshow triangle beneath the Source list (page 101), iPhoto interviews you briefly so that you can specify background music and a slide-to-slide transition style, and then the show begins. This is the kind of slideshow that iPhoto veterans have enjoyed for years . Every picture stays on the screen for the same amount of time, and every slide uses the same transition into the next one: a cross-dissolve effect.

    To export an instant slideshow, you begin by clicking an album icon in your Source list.

  • The saved slideshow. This technique, new in iPhoto 5, gives you ridiculously complete control over the timing and transition effect of every individual slide in the show.

    To export this kind of show, you begin by clicking its slideshow icon in the Source list.

The process of exporting these two slideshow types (instant and saved) is different, too; in fact, each approach has its own Export dialog box! This chapter covers both methods .

11.1.1. Comparison of Instant and Saved Exported Files

There's no doubt that an exported saved slideshow is a spectacular experience. Once you've seen yours playing on a huge screen, complete with all of your stunning crossfades, panes, and zooms, you might wonder why anyone would bother with the far simpler, more primitive look that results when you export an instant slideshow.

Two words: file size .

Consider a typical 20-picture slideshow. If it's a saved slideshow, complete with fancy transitions, the resulting file weighs in at a whopping 44 megabytes s when exported as a QuickTime movie. If it begins life as an instant slideshow instead, the same presentation is a svelte 3.4 megs when exported to QuickTime.

Exported instant slideshows, therefore, are best when you intend to email the result or post it on the Web; its compact file size just shouts "portability."

Export saved slideshows are usually best when played back from a CD, DVD, or another hard drive. Those sophisticated motion graphics add considerable bulk to the size of the file.

You may find a difference in picture quality, too. For example, the Ken Burns effect takes its toll on the sharpness of your pictures (Figure 11-1). Overall, slideshows that you export from instant slideshows are sharper than those that begin as saved slideshows with motion graphics.


Note: Technically speaking, some of the differences in exported-slideshow quality have to do with the codec (compression scheme) that iPhoto uses for each type. When you export an instant slideshow, iPhoto uses the Photo-JPEG compressor; when you export a saved slideshow, it uses the MPEG-4 compressor. More on compressors later in this chapter.

Figure 11-1. The left image is from a 640 x 480 instant slideshow exported to QuickTime; the picture at right is from a saved slideshow that's being zoomed via the Ken Burns effect. Some image quality was sacrificed for the effect, as you can see by the blurriness of the background scrub grass at right.
Your viewers may not notice the loss of sharpness, in part because the motion of the image occupies their attention. But for presentations that demand the ultimate image quality, you might want to stick with exporting from Quick slideshows ”or to avoid the Ken Burns effect in saved slideshows.


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iPhoto 5. The Missing Manual
iPhoto 5. The Missing Manual
ISBN: 596100345
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 179

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