One of the most often-asked and troublesome questions we get is “How do I keep my pictures in the order I want?” You see, although you can drag pictures around into any order you please, it only takes one click on ‘Sort By Date’ or ‘Sort By Name’ to lose all that manual sorting work you just did. And, if you use the Gift CD feature, the pictures will be shown in filename order on the Gift CD, not your manual order. In a previous article, we wrote instructions on how to rename your photos while they are in the order you want. Then, any time they are sorted by name, everything is cool. But, what if you don’t want to rename them?
We’ve written several articles on the topic of sorting and slideshows:
- Sorting Folders vs. Sorting Pictures within a Folder
- Keeping your Pictures in Order,
- Picasa Tip: Slideshows with Music
- Picasa Tip: Sorting Pictures in Reverse Chronological Order
Why not Make a Movie?!
Your first step needs to be selecting the group of pictures you want to show. Once the group has been identified, and shown as an album, then you can play a slide show, or use the command Create->Gift CD. But, there is another choice. Right below Gift CD is Movie. You can create a movie from a selection of pictures – they don’t even need to be in an Album. Once you click Movie, you’ll see a screen like the picture above. Notice all the pictures are on a timeline at the bottom. You can drag pictures into any order your heart desires. When the movie is rendered you will have one file, a .wmv file (windows) or .mov (Mac) that will play on anyone’s computer and the pictures order cannot be changed. For more information on Picasa’s Movie Making function, see this past article: Picasa Tip: Make a Movie
Putting your Movie on a DVD
Once you have a completed movie file, you can use DVDMaker on windows to burn the movie onto a DVD that can be played on any DVD player. See this past article on DVD of Pictures that plays on your TV. On Macintosh, iDVD used to be the free, included app akin to DVDMaker. It is no longer available. If you have it already, it still works fine. Here’s what MacMost (a Macintosh resource I trust) has to say about alternatives to iDVD.
Geeks on Tour Member Videos
- How to make a Gift CD with Picasa
- How to Make a Movie with Picasa
- pics45.Keeping your Slideshow in a Specified Sort Order
- pics47.Playing Slideshows with Music
- Using a digital Photo Frame (no membership required)
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6 Responses to “Picasa Tip: Keeping Slideshow Pictures in Order”
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I’m still baffled about how to keep my pictures in the order I determine when I share them with others. I have about 200 pictures from a recent trip. They come from about 4 different cameras. I have carefully spent hours editing and writing a unique file name (typically indicating the location) for each one. Clearly I do not want to lose this valuable information by re-labeling them just to specify a sequence. Can any recent versions of Picasa cope?
I would use the Export command to create a separate copy of your pictures all in one folder. In the Export screen make sure to check the box that reads, “Add numbers to file names to preserve order.” This feature adds a number to the beginning of the file name – so if your pictures were Suzy’s birthday party.jpg, mt.rushmore.jpg – then the copies in the new folder would be 1-Suzy’s birthday party.jpg, 2-mt.rushmore.jpg etc. and your original photo names would be untouched.
Whenever I sort my pictures, I use a (somewhat sophisticated) system to classify them, the numbers being at the beginning, but even though I do this, whenver I upload them in Picasa, it is a “glorious” mess and manually I have to try and put them again in the right order. Why won’t Picasa simply upload them in the order given ? What am I doing wrong ?
If the numbers are at the beginning of the filename, you should be able sort by name and have them appear in order. Folder->Sort by->Name
If the numbers are at the beginning of the filename, you should be able sort by name and have them appear in order. Folder->Sort by->Name
Head spinning and eyes burning practicing all the new info I learned from you these past few days. NOW I want to make a slideshow with music! Cool stuff. Thanks for teaching and sharing.