MacMost Now 325: Custom Slideshows With Titles Using iMovie

Use iMovie 09 to create custom slideshows from your photographs. You can add titles before and between images, as well as text over photos. You can also add transitions, music and audio narration.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost Now.  On today's episode let's learn how to make slideshows with titles using iMovie.
After episode three nineteen, where I showed you how to export iPhoto slideshows as video.  I got a lot of requests for people that wanted to add titles to slideshows.  Now, iPhoto really doesn't let you do that.  But you can use other tools to make slideshows as well.  For instance, if you use iMovie you can easily add titles, as well as customize each individual photo in the slideshow sequence.  Let's take a look.  
First, let's start in iPhoto.  Let's select the photos that we want.  In this case, I'm just gonna select all the photos from this event.  Then, I going to right-click or control-click on one of photos and select "show file."  Now, I could export all of these photos into a folder and use them in the slideshow.  But instead, I've done this and now have a selection of all of these photos here.  That wouldn't work if these photos were in multiple folders but since they're all in the same event they all appear here.  So now I have them all selected and ready to drag into iMovie. 
So here we are in iMovie and I'm gonna go to the finder window.  Select all of these and drag them into the project.  Like so.  This will go ahead and add them all in there.  And there I have them all now in a slideshow.  Now, notice that each of these has a Ken Burn's effect applied.  Which is a nice effect but if you don't want it, you just want the picture to stand still you can change it by clicking on the crop button in the upper left corner of each clip and changing it either to fit or to crop.  You can also change it universally before you import any of these photos.  If I go into project, properties, click on timing and in here you can have initial photo placement set to crop or "fit in frame."  And that will apply to all of them as you import them in.  So I'm going to do that and I'm going to re-import all of these so that they're all just set to crop.
Now, since this is an iMovie project, there's a lot more I can do to it besides just have these photos.  For instance, I can add titles.  Click on the titles button here, and then select a title, like the simple center title.  Put it before the slideshow.  Now I can pick a background, like a simple gradient.  And I can type a title.  I can also add a lower third to any of these images so I can add titles to each of the individual images.  So now I have a title at the beginning here and I have a title here.
You can change the title properties by double-clicking on the title itself.  You can see, for instance, that the title will fade-in and fade-out, which is a nice effect.  But if you want to set that to not do it, you can have it go manual to zero seconds.
We can also add transitions to our slideshow.  For instance, take this cross dissolve and put it between the title there and this.  We can do the spin in between the first and second photos.  And we can watch those.  Fade in and then flip in, like that, for that.  So you can do individual transitions as well as titles for each photo.  
And, of course, we can also add music from either iTunes or Garage Band or one of the iLife, uh, collection.  And just drag that into the entire project and it will stretch across or we can add it to individual sections.  We can also use the voice-over ability of iMovie to record narration over the entire thing if we like.  So there's a lot more you can do in iMovie than you can do in iPhoto for creating slideshows.  It just takes a little longer as you build each individual one.  
And since this is an iMovie project there's so much more you can do.  For instance, you can combine images with picture-in-picture.  You can also have video inside of your slideshow, so you can switch between video and then images.   
So that really just touches the surface of what you can do in iMovie to create highly customized slideshows.  Till next time this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

Comments: 7 Responses to “MacMost Now 325: Custom Slideshows With Titles Using iMovie”

Jean

15 years ago

Hi,
Because you asked on twitter.
Although it doesn't make a big difference; I like the old background more. Perhaps if you would use grey or beige it would be better as a plain color. White is just too bright / contrast to big.

please excuse any misspellings: English is not my native language

wilson Abrego

how do I compress the file to send it to email?
please help!!!

Gary Rosenzweig

When you export it from iMovie, it will be compressed. Just choose options that will balance compression vs. quality. A small file will be lower quality, but easier to send over email. If it is a large file, say more than a few megs, then consider using another method to get the file to someone else as sending a large attachment in email is not a good idea.

jaymes

14 years ago

Hi Gary,
I want to use a customized lower third - it has a gradiated green strip on the bottom. How can I layer that above a video so that it can appear when the person is talking? visual: I want the lower third to fade in, have the person's name and affiliation printed in white over gradiated green stripe, and have it fade out 3 secs later.

See episode 328: http://macmost.com/custom-titles-in-imovie-09.html

Ashley

12 years ago

when using the Four Corners text it originally comes in two different colors, but when I change the colors I lose that effect. How can I keep that effect with different colors? Thanks

Experiment, but there may not be a way to.

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MacMost Now 325: Custom Slideshows With Titles Using iMovie

Comments: 7 Responses to “MacMost Now 325: Custom Slideshows With Titles Using iMovie”

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