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iPhoto has revolutionized the way that photos are shared, making it easier to create web pages, slide shows and even books. This article is going to explore the make Quicktime feature of iPhoto and how to make better stand alone slide shows reminiscent of silent movies.

iPhoto lets you select a collection of photos and under the "File" menu "Export" to QuickTime. This feature allows you to add some music from your iTunes collection but that's about it. At this point you have something reminiscent of an old silent movie, images with background music. But since you are creating a Quicktime it's most likely that you aren't there to add commentary or even set up the story. The same was true of the old silent movies, and to help move the story along directors would insert text on backgrounds between scenes. You can do the same, by creating JPEGs using Photoshop, paint or some other graphic program. But to be honest it's difficult and prone to errors. What if there was a way to create a bunch of "slides" that you could between key scenes, that were easy to create and professionally looking.

Well there is, and that is using Microsoft's PowerPoint or Apple's Keynote to create the slides for you. The best way to make a great set of descriptive slides is to first figure out what you want on the slides. The best slides shows don't explain what's happening but show what's happening. There is usually a narrative arc that gives the story structure. For instance, a vacation is preparation such as packing, the airport, the different cities you visit, the food, the time you got lost etc. A wedding might have the rehearsal dinner, the guests showing up. You get the idea. Once you have story, come up with a theme for each of the slides. Keynote has great textures such as stones, or parchment to give a presentation a regal feel. A good idea is to avoid the PowerPoint templates which tend to be sales or business focused.

You can start with a blank template and add your own background. A great source of backgrounds is Google, at http://images.google.com. For instance a trip to Europe might include an ancient map in the background as a theme. Be sure to be cognizant of copyrights. Also make sure that you add the background image to the master slide of that all your slides look consistent. Add your text to the slides for each "chapter" of your story and remember that you just want to suggest not tell. The best way to do this is choose a large type font and stop when you run out of space. Avoid writing too much.

Now that you've made your slides. Save the presentation and get ready to make photos that you can bring into iPhoto. In Powerpoint, choose "Save As..." and choose the format "JPEG". This will create a folder with a "photo" of each of the slides you created. If you use Keynote, the easiest way is to export it to Powerpoint and then use Powerpoint to do the "Save As" just described. If you do not have Powerpoint, then export to PDF and use Preview to manually export each slide into the JPEG format. (Note Keynote 2 may allow for automatic exportation of the presentation in JPEG)

Now that you have created your slide photos, start up iPhoto and drag your photos into the your photo library. At this point, the slides will be part of your library but they won't be grouped with your slide show pictures. Create a new Album in iPhoto and drag your slide show photos and your text "photos" you just created to the new Album. Select the Album and you'll be able to manually rearrange the photos in the order you want. Select all the photos in the album and export the new slide show with the cool intro slides.

That's a lot and you can stop there. But if you want, you can use another wonderful Mac tool to take it to the next step and add your own voice over to your masterpiece. You do this by starting up iMovie and bring the Quicktime you just created in iPhoto. In iMovie add a voice track to make it like you're right in the room sharing your vacation. It's a little more complicated than that, but as they use to say in my old college textbooks "that will have to be left as an exercise for the reader". Have fun making your better slideshow.