David Pogue's Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

From Slideshow to Movie

Those iPhoto and Picasa slideshows sure are great. Once you select your images and choose the music to go with them, you get a fully orchestrated production, presented live on your computer screen as a slideshow.

Which is great, as long as everyone in your social circle lives within six feet of your screen.

The day will come when you want friends and family who live a little farther away to be able to see your slideshows. The trick is to convert your well-composed slideshow into a standalone movie. You'll then have a file on your hard drive that you can email to other people, post on your Web page for downloading, burn onto a CD, and so on. When it's played on the computer or TV screen, your grateful audience will see your photos, large and luscious, accompanied by the music and effects you chose for them.

iPhoto Slideshow Movies

Start by choosing which photos to include:

• If several thumbnails are selected, then only they make it into the slideshow movie.

• If no thumbnails are selected, then the entire album's worth of photos wind up in the show.

Either way, once you're ready to convert your presentation to a QuickTime movie, choose File→Export. The Export Photos dialog box appears. Click the QuickTime tab. Here, you have to make some important decisions:

• The movie dimensions. The width and height for your movie also affect its file size, which may become an issue if you plan to email the movie to other people. iPhoto generally proposes 640 x 480 pixels. That's an ...