Quickly make a PowerPoint slideshow with 200+ photos

By Wesley Fryer On April 10, 2010 · · 13 Comments

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My wife needs an auto-advancing PowerPoint slideshow for our church services this Sunday, which will include 205 photos of her preschoolers and nursery staff at work and play. She wants a 3 second delay on each photo. I’m not sure if there is a faster way to do this, but these are the steps I followed to create her presentation in about 15 minutes using Keynote and PowerPoint 2008 for Mac. You can’t do these steps, as far as I could figure, using just PowerPoint. This is yet another example of why Keynote ROCKS.

First, I copied all 205 JPG images into a new folder on the computer’s desktop.

Second, I opened a blank Keynote presentation.

Third, I selected all the images in the folder (holding down the Command key and pressing “A”) and dragged one of the icons into the Keynote slide sidebar, as shown in the Skitch screenshot below.

Fourth, I chose FILE – EXPORT and saved the slideshow in PowerPoint format. (Our church uses Windows computers with PowerPoint and doesn’t have Keynote, so that’s why we needed to make this in PPT format.)

Fifth, I opened the file in PowerPoint 2008 for Mac, and clicked to view all 205 slides in slide sorter view.

Sixth, I chose SLIDESHOW – TRANSITIONS and clicked OPTIONS. I was then able to choose AUTO ADVANCE and set the interval to 3 seconds.

Last, I saved the file and burned a CD of it to use at church Sunday.

I was thrilled to NOT have to individually create separate presentation slides and insert each photo individually. Batch-creation options like this are GREAT.

Do you know of another way to do this quickly, either on a Windows computer or a Mac?

Technorati Tags:
keynote, mac, macintosh, photo, windows, powerpoint, slideshow

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http://www.eastwood.nsw.edu.au/kinderclips Louise

In PPT you can add multiple images to as many slides as you want by going to Insert-Pictures-Photo Album. You can select as many files as you want from your folders. It’s possible to to display more than one picture to a slide and you can chose to display pics in a variety of frame shapes and can add captions as well. Works a treat!
http://www.wesfryer.com Wesley Fryer

Cool, thanks!
http://alwaysformative.blogspot.com Jason

Since it’s just pics, you can use iPhoto or something similar. You can create a photo slideshow in approx. the same number of steps. Export it as a video and you can just let it play.
http://ryancollins.org Ryan Collins

Was there a reason you couldn’t use iPhoto -> export slideshow? Or export QuickTime?

Also, for folders with less than 132 pictures you can open the folder, select all, then hit command-option y to start a quick look slide show.
http://www.carterfsmith.com Carter F. Smith

I recall there being an easier way with PPT but it’s not clear to my mind after this week . A windows alternative would be to import the pics into Windows Movie Maker, which can save in just about every video format — for computer or smart phone (even iPhone
http://Www.scottweidig.com Scott Weidig

Wes, I was also wondering why not just use iPhoto? I blogged about a similar type of presentation a few weeks back http://www.scottweidig.com/2010/03/its-all-about-software.html and personally I would not even export it out unless you were going to not be using a mac at the service or you were going to need to distribute.

Additionally, in my experience, being a long standing pc guy up til this past Christmas, MovieMaker would be a bad option as a vid that large to encompass 200+ images would most likely crash in rendering… It has happened many many times to my students… And it was the impetus for the blog post I referenced above.

Scott
Drew

Great tip! Thanks!
Brooke Ahrens

I like to use Picasa (on the desktop) to create slide shows that play as .wmv movies. Also like PhotoStory, but I don’t think you can set a bulk display time.
http://codyaray.com Cody A. Ray

THANK YOU!

Different scenario, same need.

I made a presentation in LaTeX/Beamer, which saves as a PDF, and needed to put it in PPT to be combined with my colleagues work. I found the command to export all the slides from PDF as images using ghostscript, but couldn’t find a way to import all the images easily into PowerPoint 2008 for Mac. This just saved me.

The ghostscript command line is on this page: http://www.madcomputerscientist.net/blog/home/2007/08/converting-beamerpdf-presentations-to.html

- Cody
travelgirl

You can also just drag and drop photos from iphoto into keynote, bypassing putting them in a folder on your desktop.
Brad Henley

It’s not as good but in POWERPOINT you can do “Insert”, “Photo Album”, “New Photo Album” and then select the files and it will put one together … it does the job…ish
Jarpaljo

Thank you! For those of us with PowerPoint for Mac without the album option this is a huge help!
Tools902

If all you want to do is to show the slides in a slide show (no added captions or music or anything), Powerpoint is not necessarily the right tool. Powerpoint is useful for business presentations with charts and bulleted lists, but photo software like Picasa or Windows Live Photo Gallery will accomplish a slide show much easier in Windows.

If you have all the photos on a USB drive or CD/DVD, you could open Windows Live Photo Gallery, select the photos on the drive, and then click the “Slide show” button. Done. Very similar in Picasa.