Getting Started: Ultimate Guide: Creating an Engaging Photo Slide Show in PowerPoint

Here’s your mission, transform a collection of photographs into a slideshow to entertain and inform your audience. PowerPoint has a hard way, an easy way. This is Les from Power Up Training. And I’m here to show you the easiest way to create a classy photo presentation in PowerPoint with no tears or fears. I’m going to walk you through the five steps from assembling your individual photo files to create a coherent and compelling presentation, and then standing on stage to share your stunning images. It’s really not that hard. If you already do know the basics of photo slide creation, and you want a more advanced tutorial, take a look at our part two. But if you’re just getting started, this is the place to be. So then, let’s power up to getting started with PowerPoint photos slide creation, just fire up PowerPoint and go to the File and New select blank presentation. We’ll come back and pick a theme later. Now go to the Insert ribbon menu, locate the drop down menu box of photo album, the only choice should be new photo album pops the dialog box that will create our photo album. But to make it work, we’ll need to add in some images from our computer, click File slash disk and explore your hard drive for the pictures. I recommend that you organize them in advance in their own folder to make it easier to find the collection and to navigate through them. on my computer, I’m going to go up one folder to my artwork class photos, and then select the folder called travel. By default, none of the images are selected. So I’m going to use the lasso technique to hold down my left mouse button and drag them highlighting all the images that I want. Know that Once selected, a small arrow checkmark shows up next in the top left corner of each photo. When done, I choose Insert. In a few moments, the selected photos populate our slideshow list, we can then make a few more modifications. By default, PowerPoint puts one photo per page. Look closely and you’ll see the number next to our 12 slides showing 12 pictures. Under the drop down dialog box choice called picture layout. There are multiple layout configurations. Let’s try out two pictures. This shows a preview layout of two photos per slide. And a list of photos now shows only six slide numbers as we have two slides per page. So that’s 12 photos divided by two slides per page, which equals six pages. For our quick preview project, I will click Create. And PowerPoint will work for a few moments to create this slideshow to be patient as this may take some time. Even though it’s not showing an hour class waiting, it is working. And we’re done. There’s our six page slideshow. Let me close down the auto design ideas pane that comes with Office 365, which we will be ignoring in this tutorial. To get a better look. I will switch to the slide sorter view by using the bottom right corner shortcut. But you can also go to View and slide sorter. As I zoom in, you can more fully appreciate the consistent placing of the images on the page. Take note of the last slide, where there are two photos of different types of layouts. One is portrait, which means tall and the other is landscape, which is why PowerPoint has artistically laid them out in an even fashion to fit the page on to the next step. By default, we have a black background, which helps make the photos stand out.

But they may not fit your mood. So let’s go through the design menu on the ribbon.

We’ll pick an existing PowerPoint theme that will change the color scheme, the background images and the font choices. Here’s a blue theme. Once clicked, the overall look is transformed including the layout the title page, and some background embellishments. Or if I do the drop down list, I see even more choices. Let’s try out the feather theme for our travelers. arrows, pretty slick looking. I’m gonna double click on the title slide to switch to the normal Edit Mode. Remember, this title slide was automatically created when we built the photo album. And then the look was modified when we applied the design theme just a moment ago. Let me add in a new title by putting in my pretend around the world vacation photos. We’re not done yet, we need to add the classy look up slide transitions. Let me go to the room a new tab called transition. A slight transition is the special effects. That happens when your screen show goes from slide to slide. I’m going to choose dissolve and when I click on it, it’s going to give us a preview on our monitor. More on this in a moment, but let’s automate our slideshow by turning off on mouse click and then turn on automatically advanced to the next slide. After two seconds. An important step. Make sure you click apply to all to make this change to all slides in your presentation. Now to test this out, go to the ribbon menu tab of slideshow. If you’re hooking up to a second monitor or projector, make sure you select the correct monitor you want the slideshow display on. Need more info on working with multiple monitors, see our video tutorial listed above. We are now ready to run our slideshow. We’re still on the slideshow ribbon menu. So I’m going to click from beginning this slideshow will then launch. Remember that we told PowerPoint to advance each slide automatically every two seconds, so I am not clicking my mouse to make this run. However, if you plan to give a speech during the slideshow, then you will want to turn on the mouth click option. Watch how this lies dissolve between the selected based on our transition choice as it goes from pair photos to pair of photos dissolving between pages, and at the end is dops on all black. We’ll be enhancing our slideshow in a few minutes. But that’s our first project on creating slideshows in around five minutes, it was pretty easy with big time results. Here we go again, starting a new project using the file and new blank presentation. This time around, we’re going to cover some of the more advanced features to control your slideshow. Like before, we will start with a blank presentation and then go to insert on the ribbon menu and the drop down photo our menu icon to get the new photo album. And like before, I will use the file slash disk menu to navigate my folders. And this time we’re going to work with people in a folder I have pre populated, I can use my mouse to lasso select or hold down the Ctrl key in Windows to click on additional photos to add to my slideshow. Keep an eye out on the top left checkmark to make sure that the photo is included. When done, click Insert. By default, it is one photo per slide and you can click the photo name to see the image. If you want to rearrange the order is important to first click the check box. And then you can use the up and down arrows by clicking to change the order. You can also remove a photo by clicking the checkbox again next to the image. And then to remove. Always make sure one or more images are selected before performing the action. Now focus on the numbers. These are not in reference to the photos. But this slide page number. Watch how I changed the layout to two slides per page. And when done, we now see the numbers assigned to photos. So the numbers are referencing this slide page number, not the image. Let’s go back to one image per slide. And while there are some extra stylistic frames around each image,

let’s also stick with the most useful rectangle. Finally PowerPoint gives us the ability to choose a theme from this dialog box. It’s very limited. We’re better off using our other strategy of the design menu, which will repeat in just a few moments. And like before, when I click Create PowerPoint does need to take extra time, but be patient. It will provide us with some great results without the extra efforts from us. And like before, going to this slide sorter view is a great way to see all of our images, especially if we use the zoom feature to enlarge the slide size for viewing. let’s dump the black background for a different design. This gradient background is fine. But we’ve may want a little more variety that is not standard PowerPoint, and that can be found under the various menu. Here, you can fine tune your luck by changing colors and font. But let’s try some of the preset variations with an instant update using the golden brown book. Or we can try the more neutral gray brown background to make it a little less obvious. So what if you need to add or remove more photos? PowerPoint will let you go in and edit the photo album after it is made. Once again, go to insert on the river menu, click the drop down action button on photo album and click Whoa. It’s grayed out Why? Turns out that the Edit photo album is only available in specific modes. And one does not allowed is this slide sorter view. So I’m going to use a shortcut to switch back to normal view, I could just double click the photo to get into it. And then under photo album we see that edit photo album is now available, so be in normal view. Back in the photo album control menu, we can easily adding a few more photos after the initial set. If we change our mind, click the same file slash disk button, find the new photos to add and then click Insert. You do not have to reselect the original collection, you’re just adding in new photos. To remove photos, you use the Edit photo album dialog box. And here is a critical key point. You’re changing not the highlighted photo, but the image that has a checkmark. See the blonde woman image is highlighted, but it is the second photo with a checkmark. When I click Remove the blonde highlighted displayed woman does not get removed. Look when I click the top image again, and we see that the removal was the other image. So always make sure the image you want to impact has a checkmark next to it. Other controls you have at your disposal can fix a poorly displayed photo. Once a photo was selected with a checkmark the image quality buttons come alive. But your first must check mark the photo. Now what can we do? Well, one useful feature is to change the orientation as an image, maybe at the wrong angle. Our man with glasses is property oriented. But to demonstrate how to flip an image, I will click the Turn button four times to see how we can fix what is up and what is down. The four other controls are a pair of controls for raising and lowering the contrast. And the second set is for brightening or darkening the image. Here’s a protip do not use these buttons. They’re way too basic. Sit tight for a better tool that I’m going to demo in a moment. So what is new text box versus captions. Let’s work with text box. I will go and select the checkmark for slide number five, and then new text box. What happened? PowerPoint added a new slide after number five. This will be a page that we could edit title to such as if we were changed the topic or types of photo collections. In a birthday or tribute slideshow, you might put in a new age or geographical location for the following photos.

Compared to captions, this is going to stick a text placeholder under every image, so you can type in text to explain each of the photos. Let’s see these two changes. When I click Update. First off, under photo captions. Now on each image, there’s a text box that we can edit. By default, it uses the file name of the photo, but it’s simple enough to click inside and change the caption. To better explain the image About the first change of add new text box. Well, PowerPoint added a new slide page with some generic words of text box, which we can change to set the stage for the following set of images. Next, as promised, a better way to edit photos. The built in album tool is limited and provides poor to mediocre fixes. But if you select a photo in the normal Edit Mode, a pop up context aware menu will appear called picture format, but only if the photo is selected. From there, you can select corrections and adjust both the brightness and contrast in combination. For Non photographers. The concept of brightness and contrast relationship may be hard to understand. But the newer versions of PowerPoint will let you visually see the differences so that you can pick the look that seems right to you. By default, PowerPoint photo album positions the images around the center of the slide. So if you want to add some personal variety, you can go in slide by slide and move photos around and creatively resize each image to give your presentation a special look. We’re getting close to being done. So let’s add in a new slideshow transition between each slide. Click on the transitions river menu, and do click the drop down menu to see all the variety of choices. Here, I’m going to select gallery. But if you want to see my favorite top 10 transitions, look for this tutorial above. And as a refresher, if you want your slideshow to run automatically do turn off the on mouse click and set the time between slides for automatic advancing. I’m going to use two seconds, but you may want the image should be on the screen longer. And the ever so important step, click apply to all to make the transition plus the auto Advanced Settings get turned on for every one of your presentation slides. Now, if you wish, you could add a bit more variety to override the type of selected transition. Just go through your slide deck, select a new slide and then an alternate transition for that one page. Here I’m going to select zoom and it will impact the entrance not the exit of just this page. So you created your masterpiece, and you’re ready to show it on the big screen or TV. Well, we need to get ready to run the slideshow. If you’re using a second connected display, you need to tell PowerPoint which monitor screen to use. Go to the slideshow ribbon menu and use the drop down list of monitor to select the output device. This will only work at the target device is currently connected to your computer or laptop. So you may need to use this step only when you’re at the presentation venue and you’re connected to the big screens. If you need more help on working with multiple monitors, look at this tutorial listed above. Finally, if you plan to have this run automatically, and repeat over and over again, go to the setup show action icon menu and find loop continuously until escape. With this turned on your show will loop back to the start of the first slide when it reaches the end of this slide. And you only can stop it by hitting the Escape key on your keyboard. This is sometimes called kiosk mode as you can set it up to run continuously with no one needing to babysit the presentation. Now still on the slideshow room and you were ready to launch our slideshow by clicking from the beginning and the show begins without my touching the keyboard or mouse. It moves from page to page every two seconds with the selected transition between pages

1001 1002 and it changes again. photographs are powerful, and you’re now ready to create your own unique and emotional slideshow for any situation. However, if you want to become even more creative, we at Power Up Training have a part two advanced tutorial that covers creating your own backgrounds. Changing the slide page layout with advanced configurations, adding motion to your image Just plus background music. Finally, several techniques to save the presentation as a movie to be played without having PowerPoint installed. Look for that tutorial up above.

At this point, you have all the skills and instruction needed to build your successful photo album presentation, and share your memories with the world. got questions, tips or requests for more free tutorials? Leave them in the YouTube comments below. Do like and share this video and do subscribe to get more videos like this, including the expert follow on class to build amazing customized photo slideshows with advanced techniques. If you want to see all of our videos, visit us at our free PowerPoint school at power-up.training. Until next time, go Power Up