Slideshows in PSE6

***If you would like to view the slideshow that was created from this tutorial please click here.


Sometimes it is just good to start at the beginning. I was asked by a special friend to do a tutorial on how to make a slideshow in PSE6 and since the Royal Scribe brought her BEAUTIFUL daughters over for me to photograph today, I decided that I would write this tutorial. I love slide shows and this is one of the items included in my photography sessions, but I love how they can enhance your scrapbook. When you get your book printed, and that I will talk about in another post, I would suggest burning a DVD of special slideshow and movies and making a library card jacket in the book for the DVD. Someday, when you sit down and reminisce, you won’t have to go looking for the video!

Oh- BTW – We have been under a terrible drought where we live and so I know how bad the yard and plants look – I am so embarrassed you are seeing this! I am using conservation techniques so I can’t transplant my plants into pots just yet ;=(

So – without further ado – Let’s make a slideshow in PSE6!

From the opening window in PSE6 choose the create icon.

When it opens, it will look like you are in organizer, but on the right side of the screen it will ask you want do you want to create? Click on Slideshow.

You will then have a window pop up with pre-set features for the slideshow – I generally ignore these because I am going to set my slideshow to music I don’t know how long my slides and transitions need to be yet. So just hit OK.

Notice that I did not pick any slides to be in my slideshow from the organizer window. Before I start a project – actually when I was editing and add my artistic flare – I was saving the images for the slideshow into a separate folder. So when I open up my work window it will be empty.

Now I am ready to add my images. See the BIG LIME GREEN + sign at the top – click on that.

and a dialog box appears:

and I can retrieve the images I want to use. Since I took the time to organize my images earlier, I can use the shift key and select all the images in this folder.

You will now see that all of my images appear at the bottom Slide Palate. You can also use the “click here to add photos” feature in the Slide Palate, but I find that it is easier to organize and use the +MEDIA feature. Both work.

Here is what my screen now looks like:

The first thing I have to do is find the title slide I created in PSE6’s Edit Workspace. For this show, I added titles and did all the work in the Edit Area. So let move the slide around by dragging and dropping them where we want them.

Now my title is first and the slides are in the order I want them. I want to add music to the Slideshow so I am going to click on the “Click here to add audio to Your Slide Show in the Slide Plate. A dialog box appears that contains my music in it and I navigate to the song I want.

Once you find your song and open it, PSE6 lays the track to your slideshow. The default feature will cause you song to repeat at the end of the show based on the time you select for your slides and transitions. I have a lot of images and like them to move along, so I use the feature found right above the Slide Palate on the left side that says “fit slides to audio”. See what happens to the time of my slides:

To save your slideshow click on the Output tab and save your slideshow.

So – you have now created a simple slideshow that you can save and load to your blog or burn to a DVD.