Making a better slideshow in Lightroom, part 2: Timing, music, titles, and transitions
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Timing a slideshow
- Working with music
- When you need black
- Title slides
- Working the background of your slide display
- Setting up layout controls
Timing a slideshow
You change the timing of your slideshow in Playback. You can change the duration of slides (how long each one stays on-screen) from 0–20 seconds, as shown in Figure 1. Twenty seconds is a very long time when you consider this is how long each image stays on the screen. That might be something to use for a slide that is just a background to an event, however.
Transitions between photos also range from 0–20 seconds—I am not sure what you would do with a slideshow that had 20 seconds for each slide and 20 seconds of transition to change between them.
Figure 1: Change the timing of your slideshow in Playback.
How long or short the slides stay on-screen and the length of transitions is very subjective. You need to preview your show and see how the timing feels, based on what you are trying to accomplish with the slideshow. In addition, timing may be limited by your computer. Lightroom has to find and load each image from the hard drive as it plays a slideshow. If your hard drive is slow, your RAM amount too small, or your processor speed too slow, you may find the show does not play properly at short duration times.
Here are some things affecting your timing choices that you might want to consider:
- Setting for the show. Where is the slideshow going to be shown? What sort of place is it? Who will see it? Each of these affects how long images need to stay on-screen. For a show with a group of art directors, you may want to go through images pretty quickly, as they are generally used to seeing photos quickly and will get tired of images that appear too long on-screen.
- Use for the show. How is the show being used? For example, you might be using a show for a marketing introduction, which would likely need an energetic, lively pace; or you might use a show for a community organization that will want to see images on-screen longer so the audience can look them over, finding things they recognize.
- Images in the show. The photos actually seen in the show can dictate the timing of the show. A slideshow of detailed landscapes, such as in Figure 2, needs some time for the audience to really look at each image. A show of sports action, such as in Figure 3, might look best when the photos change quickly, giving an impression of lively action.
Figure 2: One image in a slideshow of detailed landscapes.
Figure 3: Changing images quickly works best when showing a series of action photos.
- Music used. A fast-paced music track looks silly with slowly changing photos, while a majestic orchestral fanfare will not work well with fast changing photos. You need to play your music against the photos and see if the music and slide tempos complement or fight each other.
Timing, and all of these ways of thinking about timing, affects your choice of how long a slide is on-screen as well as how long the transition is between two slides. Usually, you will combine short times for an image to appear on-screen with short transition times. Conversely, you will typically combine long times onscreen with longer transition times. There are no absolute rules about this, however. Try different settings with your images, click Preview, and see how they affect the show.
