Adding Transitions & Fades to the Photo Slideshow in Adobe Photoshop

[15Katey]

For this final installment of my four part “How to Create a Photo Slideshow in Adobe Photoshop” series, I’ll add some fades and transitions between photos to smooth things out. As the slideshow stands currently, I’ve got all the slides on the timeline and there’s some movement, but things are a bit choppy at the beginning, end and between photos. I’d like to fix that below.

If you haven’t read my previous posts on this topic yet, I encourage you to do so. They can be found through the following links.

Organizing & Sequencing Photos in Adobe Bridge For a Slideshow

Importing Slideshow Photos into Adobe Photoshop

How to Add Motion to Slideshow Photos in Adobe Photoshop

In today’s post, I’d like to add a fade at the beginning and the end of the slideshow as well as cross fades in between each slide otherwise. Since fades and cross fades use up some of the time each slide is viewable, I’ll need to also adjust the length of each one. This is all extremely simple stuff, so you should have no problem with following along.

Fading with Black​

Since I already have a black background for this slideshow, I thought adding a nice fade from black at the beginning and a fade to black at the end would be appropriate. This is simple enough to achieve. To add the first fade, I’ll click on the transitions icon in the Timeline panel. From there, I’ll click and the Fade With Black option and drag that down to the very beginning of the first slide. As I reach the point at the beginning of the slide, I’ll see a black box appear. I’ll simply drop into that black box. In the following screenshot, I circled the transition icon and the black box I just referred to in red.



If I right-click on the fade itself in the timeline, I’ll see that it has a duration of one second. That means that the fade just took up one second of the amount of time the slide was originally viewed. Since I want that one second back, I’ll click and drag the end of the slide in the Timeline panel so it extends for that amount of time.



As for the end of the slideshow, I’ll follow the exact same instructions I just gave you, but instead of dragging the end of the slide to the right, I’ll drag the beginning of the slide to the left to get that second back. And that will settle that.

Adding Cross Fades​

The process of adding cross fades is nearly identical to the one used for adding fades with black. In my case, I’ll need to add a cross fade in between every slide in the slideshow. These fades, together with the ones I previously added should smooth the show out so it’s like butter. So smooth. You’re going to love it.

To add the cross fades, I’ll again click on the transitions icon, but this time, when it opens up, I’ll click on the Cross Fade option and drag it down to the spot in between the first and second slide. In the screenshot below, you’ll see the black box that appears in this area. I’ll just drop it there.



I’ll continue following these steps for each slide.

As I add each cross fade, I’ll notice that, like the other fades, they consume some duration of each slide. Since my cross fades are set to one second, they take a half second from the slides themselves. I can either just accept this or I can click on the ends of and the beginnings of each slide and drag in the appropriate directions. Since this is just a demo, I’ll leave it like it is. The slide show is fine the way it stands.

With that, the slide show is completed. That’s all I needed to do today. I’ll export it and upload it to Youtube right now. Take a look.

I hope I clearly explained how to create a slideshow using Adobe Photoshop. If you have any questions about this process, please let me know in the comment section down below. You can also ask questions in the discussion forum as well. Thanks for reading!

 

[15Katey]

How to Add Transitions Before, After & Between Video Clips​

This is such a silly simple process that you’re going to laugh at not knowing how to do it. Basically, the question here is “How can I make videos smooth? How can I make the first clip fade in, the last clip fade out and have the clips fade into each other as the video progresses?” Luckily, if you’re editing your video in Adobe Photoshop, you can answer your questions and accomplish all these goals with ease.

After importing and positioning your video clips or images into Photoshop and on the timeline, all you need to do to add a “fade in” is to click on the small transitions icon in the Timeline panel. This icon is located to the right of the Play button and just to the right of the little pair of scissors icon. It’s indicated by a square that’s shaded diagonally.

When you click on this icon, you’ll be presented with a panel that offers a few different choices for fades and transitions. You can fade, cross fade, fade with black, fade with white and even fade with color. If you’re trying to fade your video in at the very beginning or fade it out at the end, you’ll likely want to fade with black or fade with white. If you’d like to blend your clips together as they’re transitioning from one to the next, you’ll likely want to use a cross fade, although, you can fade in and out with regular fades in this type of situation as well. I’ve done that.

To actually add the fade of your choice to the timeline, click the one you’re interested in that’s inside the panel that just popped up and drag it down to the spot you’d like your video to fade. As you drag the fades onto the elements positioned on the timeline, you’ll see small boxes that are outlined in black appear. Just drop the fade in one of those boxes.

To test out your fades, simply click on the playhead and drag it to the left or to the right. Or, you can click the Play button to just let the video play through. It’ll most likely be choppy until the content is loaded into your computer’s RAM, but just try to ignore that.

I wrote a more complete post about how to add fades and cross fades to video clips in the timeline panel, so if you’d like to learn more about this topic, please check that out.

Ideas? Thoughts? Please add them below. Thanks!