Creating a Quicktime Slideshow

by Mikkel Aaland
01/01/2008

Need more help with Lightroom? This article is an excerpt from Mikkel Aaland's Photoshop Lightroom Adventure.

I love it when the real world meets the book-writing world, as it did when I was finishing up the Slideshow chapter for this book. The result is a nice workaround to the limitations of Lightroom's Export to PDF slideshow feature, and a way to create a QuickTime movie instead.

Background: my buddy and fellow adventurer Derrick Story was down from Sebastopol, and we were in my studio creating a new Adventure slideshow for an online presentation. We used Lightroom's Slideshow module, of course, and then we tried to export.

The Problem

As I explained earlier, the Lightroom PDF slideshow is very limited. Lightroom transitions, for example, aren't honored, nor is sound possible. A PDF slideshow was not the right way for us to go.

The Solution

I have Snapz Pro X loaded on my Mac which I mostly use to capture screen shots for my books. We set my computer screen to 800 × 600 pixels and "recorded" the slideshow using Snapz Pro X's video capture at 15 frames a second.Derrick edited the QuickTime movie in QuickTime Pro—adding a Flash intro—and we had a movie that can be viewed anywhere. (Snapz Pro X cost around $69 from Ambrosia Software. Window's movie capture application is available from Techsmith, makers of SnagIt.) QuickTime Pro isn't required, but it comes in handy if you want to edit or resize your movie ($29.99 for Windows and Mac). You can find our finished QuickTime movie at the O'Reilly Inside Lightroom site.

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Figure 10-39
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Figure 10-40
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Figure 10-41

Mikkel Aaland is a professional photographer whose pioneering work in digital photography dates back to 1981. He is the author of nine books including the bestselling Photoshop Elements Solutions and O'Reilly's acclaimed Photoshop Lightroom Adventure. Visit his website at http://www.shooting-digital.com.

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