iLife ’11: Changing Slideshow Playback Settings in iPhoto

4 of 12 in Series: The Essentials of Sharing and Presenting Photos with iPhoto

In iPhoto, the first time you click the Slideshow tool to play an iLife slideshow of an album or a selection of pictures that hasn’t been played, the Themes, Music, and Settings browser appears. Click the Settings tab to see the Settings pane of the browser.

The Settings pane lets you change the duration of the slideshow, set transitions, scale images to fit the screen, shuffle the slide order, repeat the slideshow endlessly, and show titles and captions, as described in this list:

To set the duration for a specific amount of time, click the Play Each Slide For a Minimum of . . . Seconds setting, so that slides appear onscreen for the duration you want (while the music repeats). The up and down arrows for the Seconds button lets you adjust the number in tenths of a second. The number of seconds you choose applies to every slide in the slideshow.

If you use a photo album for your slideshow, the timing is saved with it. You can try different timings by setting up multiple photo albums and changing the settings for each one.
To fit the slideshow to the length of a song or playlist, click the Fit Slideshow to Music option. The duration of each slide is adjusted so that the slideshow and song (or playlist) finish at the same time.
To repeat the slideshow in a loop, keep the Repeat Slideshow option turned on. If you turn off this option, iPhoto plays the slideshow and, at the end, returns to the Viewer pane. This option may be useful for previewing, but you may want your slideshows to repeat, especially if you’re using a slideshow in an exhibit or on a demonstration table.

Some themes are already equipped to use special transitions between slides, but others, such as Classic and Ken Burns, let you choose your own transition between slides. To set a different transition and the transition speed, follow these steps in the Settings pane:

Click the Transition option, and then select a transition from the pop-up menu.
To set the speed of the transition, drag the Speed slider under the pop-up menu.
Set the direction of the transition by clicking the up, down, left, or right arrows in the circular button next to the Speed slider.

A preview of the transition appears in the tiny frame next to the circular button.

To save your settings without playing the slideshow, click the Use Settings As Default option. Doing so doesn’t mean that other slideshows will use these settings — just that the particular slideshow based on this selection of pictures or photo album will always start with these settings.

While playing a slideshow, you can click the Gear icon in the playback control panel to open the Settings pane.