i have been tasked with making a surprise photo slideshow for my brother's wedding coming up on may 5th. i have 200+ photos that i need to get in some sort of order (baby matthew/kate up to current photos). iphoto is not making this easy at all. when i put them all in a slideshow the only option i have to mess with the order is the drag them around in the little bar at the top. doing that with this many photos is almost impossible. even if the option to "sort by date" wasn't grayed out, most of these photos are scans of real paper photos that were all done on the same day.

is there a better/easier way to do this? i've googled but haven't found an obvious solution yet. i don't need music playing (that will be done separately), just the images. it'd be nice if there were themes to choose from (my brother's future MIL really likes the vintage theme in iphoto).

please help. my brain is fried & i really don't want to do this.

4/22/2012 7:04:49 PM

If you look at all the photos in a folder, then copy them one by one in the order you want to a new folder, do the files in the new folder get assigned a new timestamp?

Can you then sort by this timestamp?

I've never owned a mac. I actually assumed you just talk to Siri or wave your hands or something.

4/23/2012 2:12:13 AM

iphoto is retarded & don't use folders like a windows machine does. i think this is the first time i've come across something that is not easier to do on a mac. ugh

Quote :

"I actually assumed you just talk to Siri or wave your hands or something."

i very much wish this is how it worked

what about a 3rd party program? i could get mom to pay for it if it isn't $texas. i'd rather not use a website bc upload speeds out here are shit & i have a lot of pics to use.

4/23/2012 9:06:50 AM

Rename the pics individually in the order you want them to appear.

Example: "1-weddingphoto.jpg", "2-weddingphoto.jpg", etc.

4/23/2012 10:11:58 AM

thanks. i'll give it a shot tonight. a coworker suggested i try using imovie instead too.

4/23/2012 10:54:01 AM

Try this, it's free:

DVD slideshow GUI
http://download.videohelp.com/tin2tin/

Looks pretty solid but it might be more than you want.

Nevermind, that is Windows only, not sure how I missed that.



[Edited on April 23, 2012 at 11:28 AM. Reason : .]

4/23/2012 11:26:00 AM

if it comes down to it, i may have to try that. i could do it here at work, although my brother is in the next cubicle over & this is supposed to be a surprise. he's out on job sites a lot so i could possibly fit it in while he's gone. we'll see. thanks for the suggestion.

4/23/2012 11:35:15 AM

How about Picasa?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s_NvlQat7g

I would suggest dragging 20 or so photos, one at a time into a half dozen separate folders(so you don't have to drag/scroll all the way to the top each time). Arrange each folder of 20 photos by hand, then use the batch feature to rename the photos in sequential order(see video) in each folder(example: A1, A2, A3, A4). You can then combine the folders later. The result will be one big folder with (A1.jpg, A2.jpg, ..., A20.jpg, B1.jpg, B2.jpg...B20.jpg, C1.jpg, C2.jpg, ... , C20.jpg) in the order you want.


[Edited on April 23, 2012 at 1:40 PM. Reason : .]

4/23/2012 1:24:37 PM

In the past you've been able to put photos into an album, arrange them how you want in the album, and then tell iPhoto to make a slideshow out of the album, which preserves the ordering. Does that not work anymore?

4/23/2012 3:40:11 PM

use iMovie. put them in the order you want (you should be able to rearrange them right there -- no need of all this renaming stuff), spend as much time on each as you want. apply "Ken Burns Effect". Add soundtrack if you want.


If you buy the split screen add-on, you can show both his and her pictures on screen at the same time. (i think it's still an add-on, but may be included).

It may seem like overkill, but it's very simple.

[Edited on April 23, 2012 at 4:30 PM. Reason : .]

4/23/2012 4:10:31 PM

^^that's what I did & they are all out of order

4/23/2012 4:36:35 PM

imovie seems to working just fine so far. i'm still dragging pictures in & ordering them. we'll see how the rest goes when i eventually make that much progress. this isn't fun.

4/23/2012 9:14:06 PM

Try picasa i guess.

4/23/2012 9:14:37 PM

yeah, i'm not sure what may be better (i've done some googling). It seems like the options are dragging it around like with imovie/iphoto, or renaming since it seems you can't sort by time stamp and perhaps they weren't scanned in any particular order to begin with. Both are a pain in their own way i guess.

You may possibly be able to work around this by making copies. Open the folder with the images so you can view the large thumbnails (nice and easy to see the pictures -- especially easier if you have 2 screens). Open a second folder and make a copy of the files (one by one) into the new folder. The copy may have a new time stamp. And that time stamp may put them in the order you copy them. It may be worth trying it with a few. Still tedious, but perhaps a little easier. Then you could just use the other methods of making that folder into a slideshow by sorting the pictures by the date created.

---- I tested that (in Windows XP) and it did change the "created" date. It did not change the "modified" date however.

[Edited on April 23, 2012 at 10:59 PM. Reason : .]

4/23/2012 10:54:25 PM

okay i am so so SO close to the end now, & imovie is messing up. i've been dragging photos from iphoto. i have 8 mins 35 secs so far. i have maybe 5-7 more pictures to add, including the ones from when they got engaged (the most important ones basically). when i drag these photos in, the thumbnail image shoes the incorrect picture, & the larger preview image is yet another incorrect picture. i've tried duplicating the project & adding the pictures in (suggestion found in apple's discussion forum), but that didn't work either. i've tried saving the pictures elsewhere on the computer, reimporting to iphoto, then dragging to imovie. tried dragging them straight off the desktop. no dice. idk what else to do. i'm so close to finishing & the wedding is almost here. i just want to be done. ideas?

4/27/2012 12:58:10 PM

do you have access to another Mac? you could try opening the project there and see if you get the same problem.

Another option may be to finish up with what you have, as in just publish it or export it in whatever format you're going to use. Then create a second one with the remaining photos and just play both through a playlist.

4/27/2012 1:22:18 PM

yeah i have an older imac i could test it out on. good idea.

if i end up having to do it in 2 parts, is it possible to piece them together in imovie (or some other program) into 1 video file?

4/27/2012 1:39:23 PM

i don't know if you could join them together in imove or not. but you can definitely join videos together with other software --- which you can find for free, or a demo, it just may take some searching.

4/27/2012 1:41:39 PM

Why not just use powerpoint?

4/29/2012 10:00:14 AM

i don't have powerpoint at home. also, with the powerpoint shows i've made for work, any time you include more than a handful of fullscreen-sized images, the file size gets be tremendous even if you compress them. i needed to make something that be turned into a movie file & played from a dvd player or off an iphone or off a laptop (bc people haven't decided exactly how they're going to run this thing still).

i ended up making separate shows then piecing them back together. you can do that in imovie and quicktime. showed it to my parents yesterday who wanted to add a couple of other pictures they found + a title slide, but other than that we're good to go. i'm going to [hopefully] finish all that today so they can get some practice runs in setting it up on tomorrow/tuesday.

thanks for your help everybody. hopefully i won't need anymore tonight or in the next couple of days.

4/29/2012 1:52:37 PM