Design Center Tutorial

In Configuring a slideshow in Lightroom, you learned how to get an Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom™ slideshow set up and configured. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to play and export your slideshows.

Requirements

To follow along with this article, you will need the following software:

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

• Try
• Buy

Prerequisite knowledge:

None

After establishing the settings to create the desired slideshow, you're ready to review and present your show. The Export and Play buttons at the bottom of the panel on the right of the Lightroom window allow you to do just that (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Export and Play buttons allow you to review and present your slideshow.

Playing the slideshow

If you click the Play button, Lightroom will play the image full-screen. This is the option you'll want to use when you are playing the slideshow for clients or utilizing a digital projector.

Exporting the slideshow

Although you can share your Lightroom slideshows very easily with those in your presence, either by having them look at your monitor or by connecting a digital projector to your computer, at times you'll want to share slideshows over greater distances. In those situations, you can export a slideshow from Lightroom into PDF format.

To get started, click the Export button at the bottom of the right panel or choose Slideshow > Export Slideshow from the menu. This brings up a dialog box where you can define the export settings (Figure 2).

Figure 2: The Export Slideshow to PDF dialog box allows you to choose settings related to the Export of your slideshow.

Select (or create) a folder where you want to save the PDF slideshow to be exported, and then enter a name in the File Name textbox The Quality slider makes it possible to reduce the quality of images in your slideshow in order to minimize the size of the final file. I prefer to keep the quality at the maximum value of 100 unless I need to share the file with others via the Web or email. In that case I'll set the value down to about 75 and then check the file size of the final result. If it is still too big, you can export the slideshow again using a lower value. If the file size is still relatively small, you can export again with a larger setting. In general, you want to use the highest-quality setting possible that still results in a file small enough to transmit in the manner required by those with whom you’re sharing the slideshow.

The Width and Height fields allow you to adjust the output size of the final result. Set this based on the output resolution at which the slideshow will be displayed. For most digital projectors today that will be a Width of 1024 and Height of 768, which are good values to use if you don’t know what is best for your situation.

The Automatically Show Full Screen check box, as the name indicates, will cause the final slideshow to take up the entire screen display. If you turn off this option, the slideshow will play within a window. I recommend keeping this check box selected.

After you've established the desired settings, click the OK button and Lightroom will process the slideshow and write the resulting file to disk. You can then provide that file to others so they can view this slideshow of your images.

Where to go from here

For more information about Photoshop Lightroom, see the following:

• Photoshop Lightroom Design Center
• Photoshop Lightroom Getting Started Guide (PDF, 6.8M)
• Making a better slideshow in Lightroom, part 1: Organization and layout, by Rob Sheppard
• Making a better slideshow in Lightroom, part 2: Timing, music, titles, and transitions, by Rob Sheppard

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