| One of the things iPhoto does best is generate an automatic slide show from all or some of the photos in your collection. A slide show is a good way to review a new roll of film. Similar to tools in the main iPhoto window, the slide show tools in iPhoto let you instantly rate images and adjust their orientation. Christopher, the father, takes snapshots during his daughter's birthday party; while she and her friends are working, he decides to make a slide show of images from the partya little instant nostalgia. Christopher's first step is to hook up his still camera to the computer (as described in Lesson 3). 
Then he imports the images into iPhoto. He makes a Birthday Party album and drags the whole roll to it. Finally, he does some quick weeding out, reorienting, and enhancing of photos. In all, it takes about five minutes. 1. | Click the Birthday Party album; you'll see what Christopher sees.
Before making any album into a slide show, verify that you like the order of images. Christopher doesn't like the order of the photos and wants to change it. This is how the images are presently arranged:
| 2. | Rearrange the photos as Christopher does by moving all of the painting photos to the beginning.
The finished pieces should show up right after those, and the cake scene should be at the end.
| 3. | This is also a good time to adjust the exposure of any images that are too dark or have red-eye (see Lesson 4).
| 4. | As a rule of thumb with slides, less is more, so delete any shots that are either redundant or of distractingly poor quality.
The final order and quantity should be something closer to this:
When the order of images is appropriate, you're ready to turn this collection of photographs into a slide-show presentation.
| 5. | Click the Slideshow button on the bottom of the iPhoto window.
This adds a new slide show source, composed of the images in the Birthday Party Album, to iPhoto.
In some respects, the Slideshow window looks like the Book window. The images from the original album are lined up across the top of the window, in the order they are placed in the album.
 While it's easiest to get the slides in the right order when they're spread out in the album window, you can tweak slide order from within the slide show window just by clicking and dragging images around in the lineup at the top of the window.
For every slide show, there are two key considerations:
Use the Settings and Music buttons along the bottom of the window to set the duration and add music.
| 6. | Click the Settings button.
This reveals a window of options for your slide show. Look through the options.
| 7. | Play each slide for three seconds.
It's a little on the long side, but for kids who might be distractedmaybe laughing at each other or turning away in embarrassmentit's appropriate. Anyway, it's the default.
| 8. | Leave the Transition setting set to Dissolve.
A transition is the way one slide changes into the next. If you want, experiment with various options, changing how fast or slowly the transition occurs (with the slider beneath the setting). When you're done, return the setting to Dissolve. A dissolve is a classic transition that isn't distracting and suits almost any situation.
NOTE Direction is an attribute of some kinds of transitionssuch as Cube and Wipewhich lets you determine whether slides should replace each other from left to right or right to left. You can set direction with the group of four arrow buttons to the right of the transition effect, but it doesn't apply to Dissolve. | 9. | Clear (deselect) all of the check boxes in the middle of the window, including "Repeat slideshow."
In most cases, you won't want to restart a slide show once it has run through all the imagesit will go on forever if you let it. A business owner might have an in-store display kiosk that circulated endlessly through a slide show, but most situations don't call for an endlessly repeating slide show (and your viewers probably won't appreciate it).
| 10. | While you will become a master of the Ken Burns effect in the next lesson, turn it off for now.
With these settings, Christopher is creating a quick and simple slide show, made as efficiently as possible.
| 11. | Select OK to save your slide-show settings.
This returns you to the main Slideshow window.
| 12. | Click the Music button to select the soundtrack for your show. If you don't want music with your slide show, clear the "Play music during slideshow" option and you're ready to play.
But Christopher wants music to accompany the show.
| 13. | Click the iTunes playlists that may be more appropriate than the default (Sample Music).
Christopher has iTunes set up, so he selects his iTunes playlist called Jessica's Birthday (which he made in Lesson 1). You can select any of your available playlists or go right to your music Library and select a song.
You can select one song (which will repeat endlessly if given the chance) or a single playlist. To use an entire playlist, make sure you do not select a song, or just that song will play. Once you click a playlist, its contents become visible, as shown here.
| 14. | Click OK.
This returns you to the Slideshow window.
| 15. | Click the Play button at the bottom left of the window.
Immediately, iPhoto will fade out your Mac's display, start the music, and begin the slide show. To stop the show at any point, press the spacebar to pause on a given slide; click your mouse to exit the slide show entirely.
| 16. | To finish up, drag the Birthday Party slide show from where it resides in your sources, and drop it in the Father folder.
|
|
