There are lots of services and programs out there that you can use to create a slideshow, but I am in love with Soundslides. It’s easy to use and lets you combine photos and audio seamlessly.
Some of the other benefits of Soundslides include:
- An incredibly simple-to-use interface
- A very short learning curve, most of it is drag-and-drop
- The slideshows are incredibly small (Adobe Flash, if you’re curious) instead of huge video files
There is one drawback to Soundslides. Since the files are on your server, it’s hard to email the slideshow to someone. But it is very easy to email a link to the slideshow, so I think the program’s ease of use more than makes up for this.
Step 1: Get an Overview
The Knight Center Soundslides Slide Shows page and the Official Soundslides manual are must-reads to get started.
Step 2: Install Soundslides
To help you make sense of the steps that follow, here’s an overview of the slideshow creation process:
- Create a new project in Soundslides.
- Import your photos (put them all in one folder on your computer).
- Import your sound. You can just use an MP3 from your computer for now.
- Decide what size to make your slideshow (we will use the “Small – blog embed” option).
- Reorder your images, add or remove images from your show, or change the length of time an image is on the screen as needed.
- Customize the interface. (add a headline and credits under the Project Info tab, and change your project so that it does not play automatically)
- Export your project.
- Upload your new publish_to_web folder (INSIDE your project folder) to your web server account.
- Create the embed code for your new slideshow at http://tools.soundslides.com/embed/.
- Embed the slideshow in your blog and test it!
Step 3: Upload your photos and audio file
The first step is to create a new project, which is covered here. Slideshows work best when the stories tell a coherent story, so feel free to check out my post Telling a Story in 5 Photos to get some ideas. When you’re ready, use this tutorial to upload your photos and a sound file (like a song), making sure you select the “Small-blog embed” option leaving the “Full-screen enabled” box checked if you’ll be posting the slideshow in a blog:
Step 4: Editing your slideshow
- Add a headline and credits under the Project Info tab
- Make sure the Template tab, Display tab options are set as follows:
You can choose any color preset that will look good against your blog or website’s background color.
The most common problem people encounter is that the embedded slideshow doesn’t fit neatly in the blog post or on the web page. It’s either too big (most common) or too small. You can fix this by going back into Soundslides and changing the output size of the slideshow to “Small – blog embed” in the Modify menu. You’ll have to export it again to your web server (overwriting your old publish_to_web folder) and then check it again in the post.
Another common problem is that the images in your slideshow appear sideways. To fix this check out this Soundslides workaround.
If your slideshow starts to play automatically every time you visit your blog, go back into Soundslides and check your settings for Template, Display. The Play automatically box should not be checked. If it is, uncheck it, then export your slideshow again, rename the publish_to_web folder to the same name you gave it before and then upload it to my server again, overwriting the original version.
If you run into trouble in other areas, Soundslides offers a wonderful online users manual that may have a solution.
» How to Tell a Story with Photos
