Making a better slideshow in Lightroom, part 1: Organization and layout
Starting the organizing process
The Grid view of Library is a great place to organize your images into a show. I want to put that organization into a different perspective: I am going to use some terms to describe the views that are not "official" Lightroom terms, but terms that I think are more descriptive of the process. You can use the work area two ways to organize your photos:
- Use the "Overview view." This is the Grid view, as shown in Figure 1. It gives you an instant overview of images—in the specific view seen in this figure, I reduced the size of the thumbnails by using the Thumbnails slider at the bottom so all of the images in this short show appear. You can see which photos are together and which are not; where images are within the whole show; and you can move the images from one area to another to find new relationships among them. The beginning, middle, and end of the show is quickly visible; and Grid view enables you to instantly look at the photos in front of and behind a selected photo in order, and then change the order by just clicking and dragging photos.
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Figure 1: The Grid view.Tip: Remember to make your work area as large as possible by hiding the other panels to the left, right, and bottom of the interface. You can bring any of them back when you need them by clicking the arrows on each respective side.
- Use the "Single Image Playback view." This is the work area of Slideshow, as shown in Figure 2. When you use it with the forward and backward controls below the work area, you can move from photo to photo as if you are actually viewing a slide show. This lets you see what happens when one photo changes to another. It also gives you the chance to actually view how a group of photos works together, seen one at a time.
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Figure 2: The Slideshow work area. - Integrate your use of "Single Image" and Filmstrip views. This is very important. When photos seem to work together in a grouping in the Grid or Filmstrip views, you need to also see how they play against one another, one at a time, in the "Single Image" view. As you watch photos in the "Single Image" view, you will see awkward changes, so you need to go back to the Filmstrip, as also shown in Figure 2, and rearrange photos. With practice, you will find this works very quickly and easily.
