Photo slideshows

Goal: turn a gallery's photos into a music-video-style slideshow — a real video file your client can play or download, built automatically with transitions and an optional soundtrack.

Prerequisites

  • A gallery with uploaded photos — see Upload photos.
  • To let a client generate their own slideshows, turn on Allow slideshow creation for that client first — see Add, edit & delete clients. This is off by default. You (as an admin) can always generate a slideshow for any gallery regardless of this setting.

How to build your slideshow

The slideshow form walks you through four steps. An info box at the top of the tab explains the workflow, but here's the detail:

  1. Select photos — click any photo in the grid to include it. Selected photos get a numbered badge showing the order they'll appear. Use Select all / Deselect all for bulk actions.
  2. Reorder photos — selected photos appear in a horizontal strip below the grid. Drag and drop items in the strip to rearrange the order. The number on each strip item updates to reflect the new sequence.
  3. Set options:
    • Time per photo — how many seconds each photo stays on screen, from 1 to 10 seconds (default 3).
    • Transition — the effect between photos: Fade, Dissolve, Slide (in four directions), Circle Open/Close, Pixelize, Radial, Zoom In, Smooth Left/Right, Horizontal Blur, Random (a different one each time), or None (a hard cut).
    • Motion — adds a slow "Ken Burns" camera move to each photo: Zoom (a gentle zoom in or out), Pan (a slow drift across the photo), or Zoom and Pan (both together). Direction alternates from photo to photo so the slideshow doesn't feel repetitive. Default is None (photo stays still, letterboxed on a blurred background). Motion modes crop each photo to fill the frame edge-to-edge instead of letterboxing it.
  4. Add music (optional) — you have two options:
    • Choose from the library — pick from the dropdown of pre-installed tracks. Click the play button to preview before choosing.
    • Upload your own MP3 — click Upload MP3 and select a file (max 20 MB). A copyright notice will appear — you must acknowledge it before the upload is accepted. Uploaded music is stored with the gallery and can be reused for future slideshows of the same gallery.
    You can use one music source per slideshow — either a library track or an uploaded file, not both.
  5. Opening & Closing slides (both optional) — upload a JPEG, PNG, GIF, or WebP image to bookend the slideshow, for example a title card or a "Thank you" slide.
  6. Click Generate Slideshow.
Building the video happens in the background on the same throttled video queue used for transcoding and watermarking — it doesn't run instantly. The slideshow appears in the list below the form with a status of Queued, then Processing, then Done (or Failed if something went wrong).

Copyright notice for uploaded music

When you upload a custom MP3, a copyright warning is shown. Using copyrighted music in videos shared on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok may result in your content being muted, removed, or your account receiving a copyright strike. You must acknowledge this before the upload is accepted. This notice only applies to user-uploaded music — library tracks are assumed to be cleared for use.

Music fade-out

When a slideshow includes music, the audio automatically fades out over the last 3 seconds of the video so the soundtrack ends smoothly rather than cutting off abruptly.

Playing and downloading a finished slideshow

Once a slideshow's status is Done, its row gets Play and Download buttons. Every slideshow generated for a gallery — whether you made it or the client did — is listed for both of you, with a Created by column showing You / Your photographer from the client's side.

Behind the scenes, each finished slideshow is stored as a video in that company's Slideshows video collection, so it also benefits from normal video delivery — you can find it under Videos if you ever need to manage it there directly.

Regenerating or trying different options

There's no in-place edit — change any of the options and click Generate Slideshow again to build a new one alongside the earlier attempts. Previous slideshows for the gallery aren't deleted automatically, so clean up ones you don't want to keep.

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