I have several short slideshows of my painting process posted on my blog, as well as my website, and they always seem to have an appreciative audience.
When I first began creating slideshows, my methods were a little “hit and miss.” But after experimenting quite a bit, I now have it down to just ten steps.
If you’d like to create your own slideshow, but don’t want to try a painting demonstration, you can also just pick several selected works and put them together so that your audience can view them at one sitting.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Select your photos
Find all the images that you want to be included in your slideshow and move them to a single folder for easy handling.
2. Edit, crop and adjust your photos
Use whatever photo-editing program you are accustomed to. . . there are many good ones to purchase, or you can use a free one like PhotoScape (which also has the slideshow application that I use in step 5).
3. Save all the photos at the same or similar size
You can play around with different sizes and figure out what works best for you, but just remember that very large images usually take too long to load and may create problems down the line.
4. Number your photos
As you save your photos, number them sequentially in the order which you would like them to be displayed.
5. Download PhotoScape software
PhotoScape (available at their website) is a free program that has several different applications, but the one we will use is the creation of an animated gif, which is where the slideshow will be created.
6. Select the animated gif option
Once downloaded, open PhotoScape. You will see a circle of choices—click the “animated gif” tab.
7. Place your photos in the gif
In the left window pane, open up the folder of photos that you created just a moment ago. Drag each photo of your artwork into the main window one by one. Immediately you will see them begin to transition, like a slideshow, from one to the next.
8. Choose your playback options
You will notice several playback options for your slideshow on the right side of the PhotoScape window. I usually choose 2 seconds for each frame, with a small canvas size and a 525 x 525 image size.
Play around with the choices and see what you prefer. It is very easy to view and change them as you do—just click the “preview in browser” tab and make changes accordingly.
Once you are happy with your slideshow, save it! You’re now ready to publish it to the internet.
9. Upload your slideshow to the web
If you’re using Blogger, publishing your slideshow is a snap. Sign in to your Blogger account and open a new post.
In the main window, click the picture icon to upload an image as you normally would. (Do not use the little movie icon, since the file format will not be correct.) Find your newly created slideshow file on your computer, and select it, then wait for the upload to finish. It will take a bit longer to upload than a normal image, due to the larger file size.
10. Test, and repeat!
After you publish the post, your slideshow will be visible, but paused on the first image waiting for a viewer to click on it. Once they do, it will open a new window and the slideshow will begin and run.
Congratulations, you’ve completed your first slideshow!
For more articles by Mary, please visit her blog at marymaxam.blogspot.com.