Aperture has some pretty nifty slideshow features, but you have to navigate down to the “Edit…” selection on the popup menu to get to them. Alot of people think that they’re stuck with the stock options such as “Dissolve” and lose interest quickly. Remember, whenever you see a “…” after a menu selection, that means a dialog box follows. And with Apple, that usually results in good things.
Once you get to the slideshow dialog box, you’ll see that you have control over timing, duration, and quality. That’s nice. But the interesting stuff are the Rows and Columns where you can create multiple image frames on the display at once, and have Aperture cycle pictures through those frames. If you haven’t tried this yet, you’ve just gotta do it. I just created a 3-column slideshow of a basketball game I shot, and it’s fun.
I’d like to see more controls for authoring these presentations, and I suspect we will in the future. But the biggest drawback is the inability to export your slideshows to QuickTime for other uses outside of Aperture. Now, there are some workarounds such as exporting to keynote and exporting to iDVD. You could also record a screengrab movie using Snapz Pro X. The value of these workarounds depends on the requirements of your finished product.
But don’t forget the iPhoto to Aperture connection (as shown in the illustration). If you’ve generated previews in Aperture, then you can browse those in iPhoto and even copy an entire Aperture album into iPhoto. I usually make pretty big previews, so I have the option to use the Ken Burns effect in iPhoto if I want. And the best part is, I can easily export those iPhoto slideshows to QuickTime.
Regardless of which path you take, there are more slideshow options in Aperture (and Aperture to iPhoto) than initially meet the eye.
Can anyone tell me why images I use in the slide show or images I am trying to gather in iPhoto don't pickup changes made in Photoshop? I import the images. I cut them from 60 to about 12. I make color and exposure adjustments in Aperture. I then open in external editor(Photoshop) as .psd files. After corrections are made I close and save the file. Aperture shows the preview with the corrections, but when I start the slideshow, the edits are not visible.
Hi, why is it that the quality of the pictures is so compressed in a slideshow, when the preview of pictures is fine? strange, and makes it useless for me.
Hi Travis, I haven't found a way to randomize those images either, and I looked. I would like to see this as a feature. I think it could make the shows a bit more fun.
Wow, I've spent all my time trying to better understand things like Aperture's editing capabilities, and a fun thing like this totally sailed past me. Thanks!
It appears there's no way to randomize the images, other than manually sorting them. Am I missing something? (Right now I wouldn't be suprised if I am)
I had no idea. Thanks for the tip. Is there anyway you could post a screengrab of your basketball slideshow or some other workaround so I can get an idea of whats possible? My computer isn't powerful enough to run aperture. But soon enough I'll get in gear. Thanks.
Since Aperture now uses the previews (and you can set the size of those previews), you can use iMovie to generate much better slideshows. Even better, try:
1. PhotoPresenter by Arizona Software for a quick and easy slideshow http://www.arizona-software.ch/ - only $8
2. OR, even better, why not try Boinx Fotomagico http://www.fotomagico.com/ for the ultimate control over high quality presentations (including Ken Burns and decent transitions) for $79. There are tons of export options including Quicktime and DVD.
The best thing about both of them is that they can access the Aperture library thumnails and those all important previews!