Photoshop Elements: create a photo slideshow

Maybe the thought of a slide show for your friends and family seems a little cheesy, and it may be a little inconvenient if you have to crowd around the monitor at home to view it. 

Well that need not be the case as Elements 6 has a rather neat feature to create a slide show including a wide range of transitions and then compress the result as a PDF document so you can email it to your family and friends. 

A PDF (Portable Document Format) is a popular file format that can be opened and viewed using Adobe Reader software (this is usually bundled with new PC’s or it can be downloaded for free from the Adobe website at www.adobe.com).

Elements slide show

Sure enough you can view the slide show at home with everyone present if you want, but emailing regular slide shows of your children to their grand parents, for example, that live far away is a rather neat idea. 

Needless to say there are numerous other examples of why you may want to produce a slide show. Could be a wedding or pictures from a sports day, or even from a portrait session or a children’s party. Whichever it is, Elements’ slide show option is very handy and well worth getting to grips with. 

We will demonstrate how to make an sophisticated-looking slide show complete with titles in a later tutorial but for now this technique is pretty much ideal for showing groups of images to any number of people anywhere in the world.

1Choose your images

From the Organiser Ctrl+click the images you want to include in the slide show. 

Then click the Create tab from the Palette Bin, on the right-hand side and click the Slide Show button at the bottom of the dialog box. 

Conversely, you can open the images from the Editor, click Create and then click Slide Show.

2Select slide show preferences

Clicking the button reveals the Slide Show Preferences dialog box complete with a thumbnail of the first slide and a raft of options. Each option is pretty self-explanatory but you can, for example, choose the duration that each slide remains visible, the type of transition between the slides as well as the duration of the transition. 

That said, unless you want to experiment, the default settings are as good a place to start as any. When you’re happy with selections, click the OK button located near the bottom right of the dialog box.

3Edit your slide show

This reveals the Slide Show Editor dialog box and presents you with an overview of the slide show, including thumbnails of the images in order along with the transition selected and the static duration for each slide. You can, if you wish, change the order of the slides by clicking and dragging to suit. 

If there’s a slide you would rather not show simply delete it by right-clicking the thumbnail and then select Delete Slide from the menu that appears. 

You can add images easily too. Simply click the Add Media button from close to the top of the dialog box, then select Photos and Videos from Folder and then navigate to your folder of images.

4Customise your slides

To the right of the active image you will see both an Extras and beneath it a Properties palette. 

It’s here that you can customise the look of you active slide by either adding text, choose graphics from the selection on offer or add your own narration, if need be. 

You can also change the background colour of your slide, alter the static duration again as well as enable a Pan and Zoom effect.

5Select a transition type

If you feel like you should have changed the type of transition when you had the chance, you’re in luck, Elements offers the option a second time. The default setting is a two-second fade but you can select a from over 20 types and there’s even a random option if you fancy. 

Click on the small black arrow to the right of the transition’s icon and select a new type from the pop-up menu. 

You can also apply the same transition to all the slides at once, if you wish. It’s probably best not to pick something too wacky though.

6Save your file

Once you’ve made your selections click the Output button close to the top left of the dialog box. Doing so reveals the Slide Show Output dialog box. 

This is where you can save your file as a PDF, as well as select the slide’s image size (including your own preferred size, if different, from the custom option) from the pop-up menu. As the slide show is to be emailed, we would suggest selecting the Small option of 800 x 600 pixels. 

Select Loop to continuously replay the slide show, Manual Advance to move from one slide to the next by clicking through each one using the mouse, and, finally, select View Slide Show after Saving if you would like to see the show after creating it. Select OK and save the PDF file to where you would like to keep it.

7Email your slide show

Open your email program, or right click the PDF and select Send to > Mail Recipient, and choose who you intend to receive your Slide Show. 

When your recipient opens the attachment the PDF automatically opens Adobe Reader (most PC’s are bundled with the program from new) in full-screen mode and the slide show begins.

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