In this tutorial, I’m going to describe how to create a photo slideshow using the Flash editor at effectgenerator.com.
Creating the Slideshow
A slideshow component displays other child components one after the other in sequence. To create a slideshow, click ‘Slideshow’ from the component library on the left-hand side of the screen. You can then add any other components to the slideshow by selecting them in turn. I’ll add some text and then some images.
The components are displayed in a tree in a configuration panel on the bottom-right side of the screen. You can select each component in turn to configure it using the options displayed on the right. For example, we can configure the text to read ‘Welcome!’.
You can upload images by selecting ‘Upload’ from the image configuration and selecting multiple files from your file-system. These files are then uploaded and automatically resized.
Configuring the Slideshow
We can now configure various parameters for the slideshow. Click on the ‘Effect’ component at the root of the component tree to change the width and height of the display.
Click on the Slideshow to be able to change the number of frames that is used for each slide. For example, by changing it to 50 frames per slide, the slideshow will run faster. You can also individual slides and change the ‘Duration’ parameter on the preview pane to change the duration of that particular slide.
Using Transitions
Transitions can be added to the slideshow component to change the way that each slide is displayed. To add a transition, first select the Slideshow component. Then go to the ‘Animations’ Tab on the left-hand side of the screen.
Display Transitions occur each time a component is made visible. By selecting ‘Transparency’, we can cause each component in turn to fade in. The parameters for each transition can be edited by selecting the transition in the ‘Effects’ box. We can introduce a fast fade by reducing the number of frames for the transition.
By selecting ‘Scale Up’ and lengthening the frame duration, we can create a slow zoom effect for each slide. Change the ’start value’ to the natural size of a component, 1, and the ‘end value’ to a size slightly bigger than 1, such as 1.2.
Hide Transitions occur when a component is finished displaying. For example, we might select ‘Scale Down’ to compress each component as it disappears.
Click on the Root Effect component to preview the entire effect. When you’re happy, click Publish to embed the effect in HTML or in a blog or social network.
Mixing Components
Other components can also be combined with Slideshows. For example, we can select ‘Snow’ From the Effect Generator Template library, and add this to our effect to create a layer of snow above our photos. Click on ‘Add Template to Current Effect’ to add the snow to the same canvas as your slideshow. You may need to drag the snow component above the Slideshow component so that the snow is overlayed above the Slideshow, not the other way around!
Tags: fade, layer, photo, sequence, slideshow, snow, template, transitions, zoom