Three tips to make an amazing slideshow
Do you like to make slideshows to commemorate special events? Or do you intend to make a slideshow for an important event? Or do you dream about having someone else make slideshows for you? I’ve been working on a few slideshows over the last few weeks for clients with graduates. They bring so much joy – watching your child grow from birth to graduation as the photos flit across the screen. But they can be very challenging to make if you don’t have the right kind of photos.
How can there be a right kind of photo?
As a photo manager, I really shouldn’t discriminate against photos, I should love all of them. But I don’t. At least not where slideshows are concerned, and I love slideshows. When my kids were young I used to make videos for them for each year – the videos included both photos and videos set to music with special meaning to us. At that time we didn’t have great cell phone cameras, so all photos were taken with either a point and shoot or an SLR. I had to actually have film developed and digitized (remember when you used to get a DVD back with your photos?) Because of this, I was much more mindful of the photos that I took, because I did not have endless rolls of film and did not want to pay to develop endless rolls of film. But another result of using a “real” camera was that I took the vast, vast majority of my photos horizontally. Why is that important? Because the best photos for slideshows are horizontal photos.
Tip number one: USE HORIZONTAL PHOTOS!
Why are horizontal photos better? Think about where you will view your slideshow:
On your computer … which is horizontal.
On your tv … which is horizontal.
On your tablet … which is generally horizontal.
On your phone … which looks better horizontal.
Now think about what a vertical photo looks like on any of these devices other than your phone: the vertical photo does not fill the space. It has black bars down the sides.
Can you edit out the black bars? Of course. But that takes time, and you may lose important parts of your photo because you can’t just flip it on its side. Most slideshow software, including all software that I use, allows you to zoom in on parts of the photo for a pleasing animated effect. In order to do that, you need to clip your vertical photo even more – because you need a horizontal rectangle and you don’t want to include the black bars.
Tip number 2: USE HORIZONTAL VIDEOS!
Why? for the same reason you take horizontal photos. So that you don’t have black bars down the side.
Let’s take a look at how horizontal and vertical photos and videos look in a slideshow.
Most slideshow software uses what’s usually called the “Ken Burns” effect - panning and zooming in and out of the photo. To show you the effects of this on horizontal and vertical media, I’ve created a slideshow with both. For reference, here are two of the photos in the slideshow, one horizontal and one vertical.
Here is what these photos, and videos, look like in a slideshow:
The horizontal photos and videos fill the screen. The vertical videos appear much smaller, because of the black bars on the side. But to fill a slideshow with horizontal photos and videos, you have to have them in your library, thus leading me to …
Tip number 3: TAKE HORIZONTAL PHOTOS AND VIDEOS!
Next time you are at an important event, or are taking photos and videos that you may, someday, place into a slideshow, take horizontal. If you really, really like vertical, take both.
Please reach out if you would like help creating slideshows. Slideshows make wonderful gifts, particularly in a video book, as I discuss here.