Slideshows offer a great way to showcase your work in a more engaging way. In the latest release of Lightroom CC, Adobe added new tools to create more advanced slideshows. Creating slideshows in Lightroom is very quick and easy. Not too long ago, I recorded a video tutorial which you can find by clicking here.

In this post, lets take a look at a few of the improvements.

Automatic or Manual Slideshows

Under the Playback menu, Lightroom offers the option for an automatic slideshow or a manual slideshow. When creating an automatic slideshow, Lightroom will automatically advance the slides, play music in the background, or add pan and zoom effects. A manual slideshow doesn’t offer those options, but gives you flexibility to advance the slides yourself.

Multiple Audio Tracks

Its not uncommon to have a longer form slideshow. This is incredibly popular with wedding photos or event photos, where there could be 10-15 minutes worth of images. In the previous version of Lightroom, you could only add one audio track and it would loop in the background. With Lightroom CC, you can add up to 10 audio tracks to your slideshow and Lightroom automatically will fade between songs as the show progresses. You can control how long Lightroom takes to fade between songs by changing the crossfade slider in the Playback panel.

To add a track, click the plus sign. To remove a track, select it and click the minus button. Lightroom will show the total duration of your music selection at the top of this panel. Even though it might say a specific time, Lightroom will end the slideshow after the last image is played.

You can rearrange your music selection by clicking and dragging songs up or down the list.

Sync Slides to Music

If you want Lightroom to change images based on the beat of a song, you can turn on Sync Slides to Music. This will not work if youre playing videos in your slideshow. Lightroom will only play a poster frame from your video clip, rather than the entire video in order to keep time with the music.

Pan and Zoom

Lightroom now offers the ability to add a Pan and Zoom effect to your slideshows. Adding slight motion to your slideshow creates a more visually interesting, dynamic show and helps to keep the viewer interested. Theres a new fader that controls how much Pan and Zoom is applied to each image. Unlike other programs, Lightroom randomizes the Pan and Zoom location without allowing us an option to customize it for each photo. In programs like iMovie, this same effect is called the Ken Burns effect.

I like to add just a slight bit of motion to my slideshows, but not too much because I can’t control it from inside Lightroom. There will be times when a shot moves to less desirable areas and there isn’t anything you can do about it right now.

Adjusting the Preview Quality

Depending on how many images youre using, it might take a while to load a preview of your slideshow. At the bottom of the Playback panel, you have the option to adjust the quality of the preview files for faster performance. When youre adjusting your settings and arranging your images, selecting Draft will load the slideshow more efficiently.

When youre finished previewing the slideshow and are ready to present it, be sure to change the quality back to High so Lightroom can show off your best images.

Create a Saved Slideshow

Be sure to click the Create a Saved Slideshow icon on the top-right when youre finished customizing your slideshow. This saves all the settings, music tracks, and images selected so you can come back to it at any time. You can access this saved slideshow at any time inside the Collection panel.

Creating a Preset

If youre making slideshows frequently and want to save the slideshow options to use them again with new images, click on the plus icon in the Template Browser panel. Give your template a name and click Create.