Questions answered in this document:
- I created a slideshow in an album (by clicking the slideshow button), but the next time I tried to view it, all the slideshow changes I made were gone! Where did they go?
- What types of slideshows can I make in iPhoto?
- Why does iPhoto display two Play buttons when I'm working on a slideshow?
- Does the Ken Burns effect soften my photos?
See also:
iPhoto 5 FAQ: Working with RAW images
iPhoto 5 FAQ: Using the Adjust palette
Working with slideshows
- I created a slideshow in an album (by clicking the slideshow button), but the next time I tried to view it, all the slideshow changes I made were gone! Where did they go?
iPhoto 5 has two different kinds of slideshows, and you probably confused the old kind with the new one. (Don't worry, a few of us did that too.) Look at the bottom of your Source list (the column on the left side of the window). With iPhoto's new "cinematic" slideshow, all slideshows appear as their own entries in the Source list; you'll probably see that you've created more than one copy of your slideshow there. Each copy will still have the changes that you saved in it. Just pick the one you want to keep, and delete all the extras.
- What types of slideshows can I make in iPhoto?
You have two choices. In older versions of iPhoto, you could play an album as a slideshow, and the album could even retain slideshow settings. You can still do that, but you can also create an improved type of slideshow that exists on its own in the Source list. These highly customizable "cinematic" slideshows allow mixed transitions, varied slide durations, and the pan-zoom Ken Burns effect, for example.
When you click the Slideshow button, iPhoto creates one of the new slideshows in the Source List, like "London Slideshow" in this picture.
The old type of slideshow is still there too, but its control has moved. Select a regular album, then click the Play button at the bottom left corner of the iPhoto window. When you click this Play button, you'll get the older, familiar format.
- Why does iPhoto display two Play buttons when I'm working on a slideshow?
The round Play button only appears when you're editing a cinematic slideshow, and is used to control its playback. The rectangular Play button is used to play the old-style slideshows that don't appear in the Source list (you can ignore it when editing a cinematic slideshow).
- Does the Ken Burns effect soften my photos?
Because Ken Burns images are animated, iPhoto must scale them down to ensure reasonable performance on a range of computers. This will cause some images to look softer than they actually are, though the softening effect may not be noticeable on lower-resolution displays. For example, a landscape-oriented (horizontal) Ken Burns-effected image on an Apple 20-inch Cinema Display (1680 pixels wide) would be downsampled to an animation texture of about 1024 pixels, and then rescaled to fill the screen. This should be more noticeable than if you were viewing the slideshow on a display that was only 1024 pixels wide.