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Pictures in Motion: Slideshows from your Aperture Images
Pages: 1, 2, 3

A much faster way to transfer photos from Aperture to iPhoto is to simply drag the image(s) directly from the Browser pane of Aperture into iPhoto’s Source panel. Once the plus (+) symbol appears, you can let go and drop it there.

Click the imported album and you'll see the photos from Aperture are now in there. Go ahead and rename the album from “untitled album” to something more memorable or appropriate.

Before importing photos from Aperture, go to iPhoto’s Preferences, Advanced. Put a check mark on each of the following: Copy files to iPhoto Library folder when adding to Library, Add ColorSync profile, Save edited RAW files as 16-bit TIFFs, and, Use RAW files with external editor. With these settings, you'll be able to view and work on the images in iPhoto independent of Aperture so you'll be sure you're seeing the same exact colors as what you see in Aperture. Likewise, if you want to be able to do additional editing on the images without having to go back and do it in Aperture, checking the RAW photo options allows you to make the most out of the pixels of your photo images.

From here, you have two options for a slideshow.

First, if you want to quickly do the show, click the Play icon located at the bottom of iPhoto (on top of the control bar). The Slideshow dialog box appears with options for you to set transition, speed, and other settings. In terms of transition, you now have options to do Cube, Dissolve, Droplet, Fade through Black, Flip, Mosaic Flip Large, Mosaic Flip Small, Page Flip, Push, Reveal, Twirl, and Wipe. The only options not available to you from within Aperture are Dissolve and Fade through Black.

 

You can also set the speed with a slider, and you can even preview the speed and transition in a small window inside the dialog box. Then, you can tweak some more by selecting how many seconds your slides play, the shuffle slide order, repeat slideshow (similar to loop), scale photos to fill screen, Automatic Ken Burns Effect, show titles, show ratings, or show slideshow controls. You can even save the setting so it will be the same every time. Once your settings are just right, press Play.

Oh, by the way, music automatically plays too, so turn down your computer’s volume if you don’t want the “Minuet in G” to start playing when you do your slideshow. You don’t remember this song in your iTunes? Well, you didn’t have to import it to iTunes because it came as part of the Sample Music library.

For a slideshow that gives you more control, click the Slideshow icon on the same row as the Play icon at the bottom part of iPhoto. When the album imported from Aperture is selected, and no image or group of images is highlighted, a new Slideshow album is automatically created in the Source panel with all the pictures from the album. But if you highlight several photos, only the highlighted images are included in the Slideshow album that gets created.

And now, the fun part: tweaking the settings. You can do it quickly or tweak to your heart’s delight.

For starters, you can apply Black and White or Sepia effect to your individual photos. Next, you can choose the type of transition you want: Cube, Dissolve, Droplet, Fade Through Black, Flip, Mosaic Flip Large, Mosaic Flip Small, Page Flip, Push, Reveal, Twirl, and Wipe. You can decide to go for minimalism and choose None, or you can go all out by selecting Random. You can pick and choose the slides to which you apply the Ken Burns Effect with the option of seeing how they appear from start to finish (not only the zoom in and out but also from which part of the image to which part it zooms out of or into with Click-And-Drag). Actually, you can also do this by right-clicking any portion of the image selected (or by pressing Ctrl-Click).

And then, by clicking the Adjust icon, a heads-up display appears where you can individually set each slide to play for a particular number of seconds, or select its own transition and speed.

But if you want to tweak just once and apply to all, click the Settings icon instead, and the same options appear in a dialog box, including the option to repeat music during slideshow, or fit slideshow to music.

And here’s the really useful part, you can set the slideshow format to fit the current display (default setting), or to fit the 4:3 iDVD or TV format and the 16:9 Widescreen format. This is a particularly nice feature because it allows you to perfectly present your photos in cases when you know how your viewers will watch it (like a TV monitor, or projector).

Done with all the settings? There’s one more: Music. Click the Music (iTunes) icon inside iPhoto and a dialog box drops down where you can opt to play music or not. If you want music played, you can choose from the Sample Music folder (11 sample songs), The GarageBand folder (with the demo songs), and all the songs in your iTunes Library organized and presented in exactly the same way you see it in iTunes with smart albums, folders, etc. It leaves out nothing. It even includes your podcasts, audiobooks and other stuff. Can’t find the song you want? There’s a box where you can search by song title or Artist name. Want to hear the music? Click the play button in this dialog box to hear the selected song.

OK, now, you are really, really done. Oh, but wait... you have the option to Preview it. If everything is perfect, then press Play.

And there’s more. Really. There is. Two more things actually. First, from the menu bar, you can export your slideshow as a movie (File, Export). It exports into a .mov format (in three sizes to boot, and in TV or Widescreen format) which you can play using QuickTime. And second, you can create a DVD slideshow (Share, Send to iDVD), and create an entirely new slideshow with a new set of tools for a more sleek presentation. Apple’s marvelously tight integration from the OS X to the various applications in iWorks and iLife allows you these powerful, if not playful, slideshow options.

In part two, Dominique tackles iDVD, Keynote, and a few convergence tricks as he continues his quest to build the best slideshow possible. See you next week.

Check out Part Two in the series, Pictures in Motion: Slideshows from your Aperture Images.

 

Dominique James is one of today’s finest professional portrait, fashion, advertising and commercial photographers. Originally from Manila, Philippines, he is now based in the New York City, US. He is a Nikon Pro Photographer and an Epson Stylus Pro Photographer. He is also an Apple Certified Professional and an Apple Certified Trainer for Aperture.

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