Photoshop Workshop

1. First you need to decide on the aspect ratio. For widescreen it is 16:9, for the standard TV it 4:3. You also need to decide how large you want your photos to be. If you decide you want them to be the regular 4 inches by 6 inches they won't fit either of the standard aspect ratios, and you will be left with black bars showing on the TV screen.
2. The native photo size for digital cameras is usually 6 inches by 4.5 inches, which turns out to be the same as the 4:3 aspect ratio of a TV.
3. If you want to use a larger size, say you want them to be 8 inches wide, you can calculate the height using a little math: 4/3=8/x, so 4x=3 times 8, 4x=24, x=24 divided by 4, x=6.
4. Open Photoshop, open your picture, select the crop tool, and in the options bar set the Width to 8 in, the Height to 6 in, and the resolution to 150. Drag the crop tool to select the area you want, hit enter to do the crop, and Save as to the folder where you want the pictures you are going to use in your slide show to reside. Repeat with the other photos you want to use. You will end up with a folder full of images all exactly the same size.

1. Import the folder into iPhoto. Just launch iPhoto and then drag and drop the folder into it. The pictures in the folder will be imported and appear as the Last Roll in the iPhoto Source list. If you wish you can open this, create a new Album, then select all the photos in Last Roll and drop them into your new Album. This allows you to easily add more photos to the Album at a later date.
2. Click on your new Album to display it in iPhoto, then click the Slideshow icon at the bottom of the main window. A new iPhoto work window appears, with new tools at the bottom, a sequence of slides at the top, and the selected first slide in large size in the middle.
3. You can rearrange the order the slides will appear by a click-drag of the thumbnail. You can also delete those you decide you don't want by clicking the thumbnail to select it and then hit the delete key. You can rename the slideshow by double clicking it in the Source list.
4. You can see the slideshow by clicking the Play button, which will play your slideshow in full screen view, probably with the default music going and default transition between slides, and the Ken Burns effect. We'll change all this next.
5. Select two of your photos, and try going to the Transition drop down menu and pick a different one; the default is Dissolve, but you can run through the list to see what the others are like. Select one, then click the Preview icon and it will show the first photo, the transition and second photo you have selected.
6. When you have decided which transition you like, go to the Settings icon and start making choices. You can set the transition, make some adjustments, leave Ken Burns going or turn it off, have it show the titles, fit the show to the music (as of iPhoto 5 this still isn't as accurate as one would like), and finally be sure to select a Slideshow Format from the menu of 4:3, if you have cropped to that, or 16:9 if you chose that. The default seems to be Current, and I have accidently made some movies that used that and don't fit either of the TV settings! So be sure to double check this setting.
7. If you have chosen a transition that is what you want for most of the changes, but there are few you would like to have a different one, you just select the thumbnail, and in the Transition menu use the drop down menu to pick a different transition between that photo and the next one. Thus, you could have page flip set as your basic transition, but pick dissolve for the transition between two similar photos.
8. Click the Music icon to choose some music from your iTunes Library to play during the slideshow if you wish. Personally I find this less than satisfactory, I prefer to add music, sound effects or whatever in iMovie, which is far more versatile. If you wish to do this, UNcheck the Play Music During Slideshow option at the top of Music drop down sheet.
9. Go to the Share menu item to get your slideshow converted to a movie. This is a wee bit wonky in iPhoto 5--if you do the logical thing and select the Export option, you'll discover that you have three size format options, NONE of which are the standard ratio! If you instead select the Send to iDVD option it will export a QuickTime movie at the ratio you selected in Settings, render it (which will take awhile--expect several minutes for each minute of movie), and open iDVD. You can promptly quit iDVD, then go to your Movies folder where you are likely to see two new files, named after whatever you named your slideshow. Say it was Flowers, you'll have Flowers.mov and Flowerstemp.mov (I think this comes from iDVD, but I'm not sure). Throw the one with temp in its name away. You'll now have the QuickTime movie which you can use in various ways.

One of the things you can do is export a streaming movie out of iMovie and put it on a web site to share with your friends and relatives. Here's a link to a short, and compressed, movie I made:

Ken In Italy

This should stream, but it is still pretty large, about 8MBs, so if you have a slow connection you may not want to bother. The high quality uncompressed version is 228MBs. Oh my!