How Do I Do That In Lightroom? | Chapter 7: How to Make Awesome Slide Shows

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Chapter 7: How to Make Awesome Slide Shows

Just Don’t Put Any Emphasis on the Word “Awesome

There are parts of Lightroom that get used to death, like the Library and Develop modules, and then there are parts that…well…get used occasionally, but only because: (a) you don’t have any other possible option available to you, or (b) you are admittedly too lazy to export your images from Lightroom into any other program on earth that makes slide shows, and therefore your only option is to make one right within Lightroom. Now, if you’re asking yourself “Is he kidding? Is the Slideshow module in Lightroom really all that bad?” That is a question that can only be asked by someone who has never used it, because if you had used it, you would simply skip over this chapter because the rest of Lightroom, with the possible exception of the Web module, is actually really good. So, what happened to the Sideshow module that has made it so spartan? So clunky? So “unused?” So nearly abandoned by Adobe? This is a good question. I can only imagine that when they originally developed Lightroom, a slide show feature was in the initial wish list of features, but they kind of forgot about it until the last minute and just “went with what they had ready.” When Lightroom 1.0 came out in 2007, it had a lame slide show feature that is nearly identical to the one we have today, save for a few small, minor improvements. You know what else came out in 2007? The iPhone. Back then it had a very small 3.5″ screen, there were no downloadable apps, and no App Store whatsoever. The “big capacity model” was 8GB and it had dial-up speed Internet. Look at the features of the iPhone today. Now, look back at the minor new features in the Slideshow module in Lightroom since 2007. Back at the iPhone. Now back at Slideshow. See, I wasn’t kidding with this one, was I?