iPhoto '11: The Missing Manual

Chapter 11. iDVD Slideshows

Let’s face it: Most of the methods iPhoto gives you to show off your prize photos are geek techniques like sending them by email, posting them on a web page, turning them into a desktop picture, and so on. All these methods involve making your audience sit, hunched and uncomfortable, around a computer screen.

Now imagine seating them, instead, in front of the big-screen TV in the family room, turning down the lights, cranking up the surround sound, and grabbing the DVD remote to show off the latest family photos. And just think how cool it would be to send photo DVDs to family and friends who live far away!

Thanks to iDVD, part of Apple’s iLife suite, you can create DVD-based slideshows from your photo collection, complete with soundtracks, navigational menus, and screens just like the DVDs you rent from Netflix.

This chapter covers the basics of how to bring your photos from iPhoto to iDVD and how to customize, preview, and burn your slideshows once you’ve exported them to iDVD.

The iDVD Slideshow

You don’t actually need iPhoto to create a slideshow in iDVD. By itself, iDVD has all the tools you need to create interactive DVDs that include movies and soundtracks as well as slideshows.

But using iPhoto can save you a lot of time and trouble. You can use iPhoto to preview, edit, and organize all your photos into albums first. Then, once your photos are arranged into neatly organized albums, you can hand them off to iDVD with just one click, which converts them ...