Create a photo slideshow in Windows Vista

The easiest way to start a slideshow is to click the Start button and then choose Pictures from the menu on the right. Then, use Windows’ own file commands to navigate to the subfolder that contains the photos for the slideshow and double-click to open it. With the photos displayed in the main window, choose a photo to open the show and click on it once to highlight it. Then, click the Slide Show button on the button bar at the top.

If this is the first time that Vista has run a slideshow then it will use the Classic theme where the photographs switch from one to the next without any effects. Use the controls at the bottom of the screen to pause the show or move back or forward to the next photograph. Alternatively, click the Themes button and try one of the other effects – Pan and Zoom is a nice effect with high-resolution photographs and so is Collage, which we’re choosing here.

Here’s Collage in action. Vista displays a textured background and then layers photographs from the selected folder one on top of another to form an interesting collage. While the show is running, click the button with a little cog on it to open the settings menu and have a look. From here it is possible to control the speed at which the show plays back, whether it should loop to the beginning again when it reaches the end or whether the pictures should be shuffled to display at random. When the show has finished, click the Exit button.

Alternatively, some people use Photo Gallery to organise all their photos because they like the way it organises lots of pictures by tagging them or by sorting them in date order and so on. If that’s the case, click the Start button and then choose All Programs, select Windows Photo Gallery from the menu and then, when the program loads, navigate to a folder with some interesting pictures in it. To start a slideshow, click the play button on the transport bar at the bottom of the window.

Many home PCs will have come with a copy of Windows Vista Premium or Ultimate. In that case, there’s another way to produce a good-looking slideshow. Start by loading Media Center – click the Start button, then choose All Programs, then Windows Media Center. When the program loads, use the carousel to scroll through the options in the center of the window until ‘picture library’ is displayed. Then, click the ‘play all’ button to start a slideshow of every photo in the Pictures folder.

The slideshow that Media Center uses is slightly different from the one used by Windows Explorer and Photo Gallery. There are still the same basic controls at the bottom to pause, go back and forwards, control the sound and so on. In addition, move the mouse pointer anywhere over the slideshow and Media Center displays two buttons at the top left. The familiar Back arrow takes us back to the previous screen while the Windows icon goes straight to Media Center’s top level menu. Let’s click the Back button.

Back at the main Media Center carousel, click the picture library item and then, when the thumbnails appear, click the ‘date taken’ link at the top (this is just one of the ways it’s possible to organise photos in Media Center). Roll the pointer over to the right-hand side so that the right-pointing arrow appears and click that to slide the pictures from right to left until the correct year appears in the centre of the screen. Click the month thumbnail to open a folder and then navigate to a photo and click it.

Although it’s perfectly possible to run a slideshow like this, it is also nice to add some background music. Media Center makes this easy because it manages music as well as photos and video. Just click the Windows button at the top left of the current slide to return to the main carousel menu and then scroll through the items vertically until music appears. When the music library is selected in the middle of the screen, click it once. Use the tags along the top to find a piece of music – here we have clicked genres and then chosen Classical.

Click once on the chosen genre and then have a look around to find some music that will go with the slideshow. We have selected a bit of Vaughan Williams. Simply click on the album sleeve to open it. If the slideshow in question is really long – perhaps it’s being played at a birthday party – then select Add to Queue and find more music. A single album is going to be enough for us so we can just click Play Album.

Want to play all of the photos in the Pictures folder? At the next screen, just click the Play Slide Show button and Windows Media Center will oblige. To see photos from a specific folder, however, click the Windows button again and then select Pictures + Videos from the main carousel. Navigate to the correct folder as described in Step 7 and then click it to open. Click on a picture and then show will start playing from there – with a musical accompaniment.