Hello everyone, as you can see from the below slideshow there are lots of great things you can do with GIMP. I'm sure there are some other programs that will easily make slideshows, but GIMP is the program I use to make my maps, and thanks to a little help from Koontz1973, this is what I used for the slideshow.
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The below directions are step by step, so it does look like a lot, but it's really not hard. It will also make your life easier if you have all of the photos or images you want to use in one folder, that way you can just load them all at one time.
Well, here we go...
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1. Open GIMP and create a New image - File -> New - The size can be whatever you want it to be, but just make sure it is larger or the same size as the pics you will be using. For this, because I'm posting in a forum and want to use the Img tags I had to keep it to a width of 500px, which put the height at 476px. 2. Now hopefully you have all of your images in one place, which makes loading them easy, or you can do one image at a time. Let's just say you have a folder with 10 pics you want to use, just load them all in as layers - File -> Open as layers - Select the folder or the pics and hit Open. Now all of your pics should be loaded in, each one as a separate layer. *Note - The final slideshow will run the pictures starting with the bottom layer to the top, so the pic you have on the bottom of the layer list will be first. 3. Now you can use GIMP to add text to the images. Just click on the Text tool, and click on the layer you would like to add the text to. This will put your text on a separate layer as well, which will need to be merged down so as not to mess up the slideshow later on. For this just click on your text layer, which should be the layer above layer of the pic you want it on, Right Click -> Merge Down - Note, once you do this you will not be able to edit the text with out Undoing the steps to un-merge them again. 4. Maybe you want to add an introduction slide. You can either add a new layer by clicking on the little sheet of paper icon on the Layers-Palette Editor, or by using the blank layer that was created in step one. Either way you want to fill that layer with a color, white, or whatever. Just click on the layer and drag the color you want to it, and it should fill in the layer. Repeat step three merging the text down onto this layer so you have your intro slide. 5. Now for the magic. We're going to save the image as an animated GIF. Click on File -> Export -> expand the Select File Type box at the bottom -> select GIF image. Next a box of options will open up. -Uncheck GIF comment. -Do check As Animation. -Loop Forever option is up to you. For this I do have it looping forever. -Delay between frames can be whatever you want, just note that 1000 milliseconds is 1 second so unless you want a super fast show just change it how you need. If you want the delay to be the same for each slide, or the majority of them, it will save time to check Use delay entered above for all frames. 6. Now go to File -> Open, and find your saved GIF file you just made. In the Layers Palette you should see that all of the layers have been renamed as "Frames", and includes the slides time. Here is where you can adjust the order of the slides if you need, or adjust the time of specific slides, etc. For my slideshow I set the intro slide at 6000ms(6 seconds), the second slide at 4000ms, the third at 30000ms because there is some text to read, and the rest at 1000ms. The last slide I have set for 40000(40s) so the show won't loop to quickly. 7. At this time you can preview your slideshow to make sure everything is the way you want it, hit Filers -> Animation -> Playback. This will open a window with your slideshow. Just hit the play button and it should run how you have it set up. If there is anything that needs to be changed, now is the time to do it. 8. Once you have everything the way you want it hit File -> Overwrite xxxx (or whatever the name of your GIF file is) And there you have it, an animated GIF Slideshow you can post on the web, email to people, etc. That should cover everything but if you have any questions, or you run into trouble please feel free to PM me.