Make and Share Slideshows using iPhoto and Dropbox

Every year I create an end of the year slideshow to show at our final Tasty Tuesday (which I'll be blogging about soon, promise!) 

Let's start at the start. I'm a Mac girl, so making the slideshow is seriously easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy-super-breezy! I import my pictures into iPhoto and add them all to one folder. Then when you click on that folder, you'll see this - look at the bottom of the window. Just click that slideshow button and DONE! No joke. It's that easy. If you're a PC person, it's ok. We can still be friends and all, but you will have to skip way down to the bottom of this post to see the Dropbox part. Unless of course you want to see the awesomeness that is Mac, then just keep reading ;)

That button will play a great little slideshow in which you can choose the transitions and even choose music from preloaded tracks or your itunes library. 

Now if you want to go one step further,  click on that "create" button over on the right and choose "slideshow"

Then you can choose the theme for your slideshow. The great thing is that the themes will randomly insert your pictures into cute frames or collages wherever they fit best!

Then choose your music...

And finally, under settings, you can choose things like having the slideshow repeat after it's finished, the length of time to play each slide or timing it so that the pictures end when the music does. It really does a remarkable job of making a professional looking slideshow SUPER easy.

Now...the big question. The parents always love it and they always want a copy. The usual route is to burn a dvd for cd for each child. This of course, requires time and a major expense. This year I wised up a little. When you are done making your slideshow with the steps above, you'll see the "export" button at the bottom of the screen. When you click that, the menu below will pop up. I chose medium and export. It just takes a couple of minutes, and then your slideshow will be on your desktop in a sharable format.

Here comes the genius part  (that I have to credit my hubby with). You'll need a Dropbox account. It's free and you can sign up for an account here. It's a great way to store and send files online. Once you're in Dropbox, drag the video to your Public Folder <--- that's the important part. Don't just put it in  your general Dropbox files, it has to be the Public Folder. (Edited: Accounts started after October 2012 no longer have a public folder, but you can share a link from any folder. Much easier actually!)  Then after that, control-click on the video in the public folder and you'll see the option to copy the public link. Do that.

Then it will give you a link that you can email out to your parents! Then they can see the video on their computer and even download it themselves. See, told ya it was easy!

I sent it to all 20 of my families and they've all been able to see it, otherwise I would be a little hesitant to share this with you. We've got about 2 weeks to go here, so things are really starting get hectic. Being able to free up all that time and energy (and money) I usually spend making DVD's has been a lifesaver. Hope it helps you a little too!