iPhoto 5: The Missing Manual, Fourth Edition

Option-Click Slideshows

There’s mercifully little to learn about instantaneous slideshows—the ones that begin when you Option-click the Play button beneath the Source list. The slideshow begins automatically and instantaneously, leaving nothing for you to do but sit back and enjoy the show. (All right, truth be told, you can have some involvement, as described later in this chapter.) Finish the show by clicking the mouse.

Which Photos

Among the virtues of this slideshow type is the freedom you have to choose which pictures you want to see. For example:

• If no photos are selected, iPhoto exhibits all the pictures currently in the photo-viewing area, starting with the first photo in the album, book, or Photo Library.

  Most people, most of the time, want to turn one album into a slideshow. That’s easy: Just click the album before starting the slideshow. It can be any album you’ve created, a smart album, the Last Roll album, or one of iPhoto’s built-in monthly yearly albums. As long as no individual pictures are selected, iPhoto will reveal all the pictures in the album currently open.

  Tip

  For the first time, iPhoto 5 lets you create an Option-click or instant slideshow from multiple albums. That is, you can select more than one album simultaneously (by ⌘-clicking them); then, when you click Play, iPhoto creates a slideshow from all of their merged contents, in order.

• If one photo is selected, iPhoto uses that picture as its starting point for the show, ignoring any that come before it. Of course, ...