Maximize Your Message

You’ve got the best slideshow tool on the planet – it seems to do everything you could want. There are so many bells and whistles, you can’t wait to take advantage of them all and make a great looking slideshow.

But Wait…

Take a moment to fully understand your goal, which is to pass on a message and tell a story. Anything you do to confuse the message can ruin the viewer’s experience. Without care, you can even defeat the message completely.

Effects used with care can enhance your overall presentation as seen here in a scene from one of photographer Mark Ridout’s latest slideshows.

Whether you’re showcasing a bunch of pictures of a trip or event, creating a quick-and-dirty slideshow or a multi-year epic project, your message should be your highest priority.

Read More

How Ken Burns Brought the Civil War to Life

It’s no secret that documentarian Ken Burns popularized the technique of panning and zooming on still images, otherwise known as the “Ken Burns Effect”, in his 1990 film ‘The Civil War’.

In that documentary Burns worked with over 16,000 archival photographs. Instead of showing static images on the screen, he used a tripod to pan across and zoom into points of interest in the photos. Now, most modern slideshow tools have motion effects built-in and the ‘Ken Burns Effect’ is as easy as a mouse click or two.

Read More

Tips for Sprucing Up Titles & Text in Your Slideshows

It happens all the time. Picture a perfectly nice bunch of photos, the slideshow beautiful in every respect… except for the underwhelming title slide at the very beginning. It’s the first thing you see when you watch the show. Doesn’t it seem worthy of a little extra attention for the sake of making a good first impression?

The thing is, people often assume that because text is a functional element, it doesn’t need things like beauty to justify its existence. But there’s no reason why it can’t be both! Text can have color, an exciting form, movement, and so much more.

Here’s a few simple tips that might just save a perfectly respectable show from being blighted with poor handling of text.

1) Don’t treat text like an afterthought.
Give it the same attention as you would a photo. This one seems like it goes without saying, but it’s the most common offense. Leaving captions at the default settings is safe, and won’t cause any disasters, but it’s not going to win you any special attention either. Put some thought and effort into touching up titles and captions so they look polished, even if you want them to be understated.

Read More