Create a Clean Photo Slideshow Animation in After Effects!

1. Introduction: hello and welcome in this little aftereffect module where we will work towards creating a really nice kind of parallax see slideshow in after effects. I will show you how to proper organize and design a real life slideshow where recon cycle through several photographs in a really nice fashion we will use the camera will use masking well at some glass, affect some color correction. So really much of fun involved a really great after effects project to know if you are interested. Let's head over right to it. And let's create this slight show together. See you inside. 2. Precomp the Precomp: hello and welcome in this tutorial where we'll try to set up our slideshow now. At first I would like to start building my seen my my actual photograph number one, because later on, we can expend on that and you can add additional scenes. So I hit here to greet a new composition. I'll call it like photo one or seen one. Let's maybe go toe for seen one, because photographs will be in another pre composition full each the size. And as for alliteration, you need 10 seconds or eight seconds something so it won't be too long because people will get bored if one photo is showcased for more than 10 seconds. But you can always adjust this on the flight, so I will stay with my 10 seconds at the beginning. So I have room to work with, and I will immediately start by importing my photographs. I hope you have preferred a few photographs because we will need it for this product. In my case, I have five photographs here. I'll drop them in. I have them in sight of after effects, and I can immediately start the work. Okay, I'll direct the first photograph you can see it's a photo off a sports track like this, and I'll again pre composed because I want to be able to duplicate the scenes I have and duplicates the photographs I have. So I right click pre composed and I'll call it like photo graph a one. Okay, now I know that later on, as I want to change something in the first scene, I'll go into my C No. One photograph. Call one, and here I can delete. I can change. I can adjust my photograph. Perfect. So this is where you should be at. At this point, you should have created a pre composition. You should have created a pre composition for for the scene and fold a photograph. And he should have all photographs you want to use imported into after effects. Let's continue in the next tutorial. I would like to make small steps so you can really complete each one of them, and we'll slowly built up a very simple sleight show here. In the next lesson, we'll start to build our scene 3. Make the first glass block: Hello and welcome back. This will be a very important and fun lesson because it will set the pace for the entire slide show we want to make. Now you have this photograph. 01 Now I want to duplicate it or sorry. Before we duplicated, I want to make it bigger because we'll do a little parallax effect here. And since we want some some parallax ing movement here, I need to seem to be a little bit bigger. The reason I am resizing this is because I do not want to harm the photo. The photograph within the photograph or one scene remains the same. I'm changing this pre composition, not the actual photo. Okay, I'm reciting it to about 121 130% depending on how much of movement do we need. But that will come later. We want to keep it simple. So 120% should be enough and we will make it enough. Okay, now please duplicate this photograph A one. You have the second pre composition. OK? What I want you to do, I want you to take the panto now we'll draw a shape which will fly over the composition just to make it a little bit a little bit more parallax E and to give it a little bit more flavor. Okay, The simplest thing you can do and what's very popular and very good looking is to create such a mask. A simple, skewed rectangle. You can make it like this and boom. Okay, the great thing here is that I can always precise and change it a little bit if I think that something is off with it. Okay, Now, this is the photograph with my mask. Now the great thing here is I can process, and as I scale it further, you see, it comes towards me now I would like since this mask is in this position, I'll press why? To select my pen behind Tool. And I'll place the anchor point to in about the middle off this object. So it's easier for me to rece ice Now you will create the first animation you want to be somewhere at the beginning. You want to press em like mask and you want to by having the selection tool opened. You want to double click on the mask? I'm doing this because I do not want to move the composition. I don't want to move only the mask, which is in the compilation. Let me show you what I what I mean by that. You want to keep from the mask path at the beginning. You want to go forward for about two or three seconds, then you want to double click on the mask again. And with the shift key, you want to place the mask to the right side. It can go off the screen at ST it can stay on the screen. It's up to you. But this would make such an animation. And if you press s, you scale it a little bit up. Look with do we achieve, we achieved this little this very nice looking animation. And if we duplicated a few times, we can have a few off them. It's like it makes the glass slight show effect, which all people like so much. Okay, I'll take this key frame the 1st 1 Maybe it will look better if it would be off the screen . So it really flies in and flies off. Okay, Great. This is how I created the 1st 1 Let me create a few more because I think we want an animation for at least five seconds. You want to be able to watch this photograph and check it out for at least five or six seconds. So let's continue in the next lesson. Well, at a few off those elements here. 4. Additional glasses: Okay, We continue our design, and I see the first glass block, and I want to duplicate this photograph. I want to press again. M like mask. I want, of course, to give a different color to this mask because I want to be able to see it. And now we need something different. At first, I'll swap those key frames because now they will go from both sides. Definitely a different speed for both of them and different angles. Okay, this one comes from here, and in my opinion, it shouldn't go as far. So by having my play had a disc, iframe, I'll move it back and it can stop in the middle of the screen. Maybe it will take a little bit longer. Like those six seconds which I was talking about. Maybe this composition is a bit too long. I'll make it shorter. Okay, like six or seven seconds. That should be enough. And we have something like that. The next adjustment. Off course. The scale. Maybe you will make the scale bigger. Ok, Do we like this? I think we kind of do que the anchor point again here. Now I I can notice it's too slow and the 1st 1 was too quick. So I will just extend it to five or six seconds. Now you can see what's happening on the screen. Okay? Definitely. We want one more. And this one Look, another cool thing. I want to show you. Press second. Em, of course, changed the color because you still want to see the differences. And those key frames need to be shifted off course they need to and double click your Maybe I'll place it here at the end. And how does it fly? It flies like that. What's cool here? I can go to my effects control and five and I don't know why do I have such an effect here ? I should have something like like black and white Or tend because I would like to create a little color correction here. And you can also go to effect, have this photograph on selected effects color correction And look what we can do here. We can do curves. We can do black and white. We can do so many things like great brightness and contrast. Let's maybe select the brightness In contrast, you see, So in this place this image would be stronger. And now the glass comes really into play because it becomes stronger and more visible here . I do not want to overdo it. So at this point I think I'm going to stop. Let me preview the animation. Okay? We have a few of those. They are too similar. So they definite should be more apart from each other. And that's why I would need to adjust a few key frames because those two there's two from the right side are very similar. So maybe it will start later. Let me go to this position. Double click on it. Why are you so far away? You can start from the middle. I don't really care. I can trust t my capacity and at first it can be invisible. But one second later, it starts to slowly become visible. You can see I can really play around with those key frames. I can do whatever I like because they can appear now. It's of course to slow. Sorry, I'm making so much adjustments, but now it appears nicely. But it needs far more movement. I'm sorry. I want to select the blue and I want it to go to the left side. This key for him here. So it moves. It fits into the screen. So the viewer doesn't really see it, but he sees that something starts to appear here. Now the movement is again to shallow, but you can right click key from assistant and Easy East key friends and the movement will be nicely eased into the screen. Okay, I'll stop right there. I'll see if one more of them will fit into the screen. Maybe we skew it in the other way, other direction, and then we'll finalize the sea. 5. Playing around and failing: Okay. One last approach. What I would do here, I would want the right one. It was photographed for one. Let me set up maybe orange. So I see it better. I'll control duplicated control. D And I was telling you that I don't disk you it in the other direction. I'll press end like mask. I will click on the mask. Double click on it. I need to select my parental. I will create an additional point here, and I'll make it like that. It doesn't matter if I have one point more. It was just convenient for me to create it. Okay, that way around birth. Okay, I don't need more or sorry, I am again in this composition. So you see? No, my mistake. My mistake is having those key frames at all. I want only to have this one key frame on the mask Pat and going forward v DoubleClick a little bit forward. Okay, so it goes like that. I wanted to go from the beginning like this. And this time, on my effect, I want black and white, so I'll select black and white. And you can see it takes the color out off the image. Maybe Maybe I'll make it a little bit less so it gets a bit darker now. I see. I do not want a tent. Okay, The great one should look okay. And I think we have completely enough off these objects. I close everything down like that and we have our seen pre built. A few animations are going around. Maybe even too much. If it's too much, you can always de select something. Okay, this appearing a swell is too strong here, this blue in which we did. And it's a mother off adjustments. So maybe this fate in will get slower. Now you can see fate and happens a lot slower. And it's not so intense for the viewer. Okay, Now you have trouble seeing everything because we have too many compositions. But if we pre composed this scene and replace the scene somewhere, we'll not see all of this. Just imagine if you see it like that, it looks completely different. Now you can see what's happening, and you can notice that it's a really cool animation. Okay, let's head over to the next lesson where we will finally, at a little perspective, it will be a very simple trick. And then we can finally built up this this light show and there's nothing more itude then completing this entire product. 6. Add the parallax camera touch: Okay, We are in seen Owen, and we want to do as much as possible in see no one, because later on, we will simply duplicate it. Now, I want this little movement effect here, so I'll create a new camera before I do that. I want to make every layer three d. Okay, now we are camera ready, you camera. Okay. And now we will be able to create a little movement. We can do that by selecting the camera tool. We have the unified camera tool, the orbit camera tool. The unified tool allows us to create this nice movement, so I'll get use of that. I will keep rain. My position and the first position should be maybe like this, I'll go forward to the end of the scene. Let's say that the anti said at about six or seven seconds, and I'll simply move around the composition. Now, watch how beautiful the movement can be because this is what creates the parallax feel in this composition. Now, it's maybe not as noticeable because we have only 120%. But it really adds the little depth into this. This slideshow, then you see, you do not need more. We could a text or something else. It would move along with the entire composition. Now I believe that we have built Sina one. Before we proceed. Global color, corrections and adjustments and vineyards can be added at the end of the slideshow. For now, this is what I wanted to achieve. My photograph Number one is ready, animated and perfecting Showcase. Okay, we can go forward and finally built this team in our entire animation. 7. Let's organize and cut the comp: Hey, welcome back. How long does our presentation our slideshow needs to be? I have five photographs. They have about six seconds, but I'll make the scene a bit longer. Let's simply go to Project, create a new composition and this composition can be slide show complete. It can be called like that. It doesn't matter. The width and height states full HD and the duration peace Make it at least 40 seconds. Now we have room to work with. If I will drag and drop, see no one here. You can notice it's a portion off this entire composition. Now I want to duplicate the scene and create other images similar to that. That's no problem. If I will take here and duplicated, I'll just duplicate the actual pre composition. But if I go to my project window where I have seen a one and I press control de here, you can notice it. Greet new compositions instead of duplicated compositions. I have five photographs. I want five seeds seen two or three or four off. 05 Now I should make the transition first before I duplicate everything. But I wanted to show you what happens when we are duplicating, then we would also need to duplicate this photographs. 1234 We would need to go into each composition and we would need toe change those things. And what's great in after effects everything can remain s is if I select might left old key . I believe it will be option key if you're using a Mac. So select photograph number two, Select old key and by having disc clicked on just selected like this. And wallah, you are done now seen one has photographed one in it but seem to should have photographed to in it No problem. You select all compositions you select photograph or two left old whom you drag and drop and everything is as previously everything is prepared for our slideshow just with a different image and what's cool here as I go to my slideshow complete as I built in my scene 02 I built it in here. It will go to the second photograph now off course. My problem is here that this compulsion is too long. I love course adjusted and that's what I didn't want to duplicate it right away because right now I'll need to adjust everything before I proceed. But I'll just delete those scenes because I just wanted to show you how that works. And I'll go to my C No. One before we proceed and I'll make the see No. One, six seconds and 16 frames. Okay, that's that's fair enough. Six seconds. 16 frames. If you don't know how to change the composition, you can press control and K on your keyboard to enter the composition settings or to simply go to composition composition settings. Okay, our see. No one has six seconds and 16 frames in the slideshow complete. You see, it was 10 seconds before. Now it's short perfect. I will no close this lesson because in the next lesson I will prepare a very simple transition which will allow us the transition between those photographs. And then we can finally duplicate everything, prepare everything and finished this entire animation up. Proceed to the next lesson because the next transition will be very simple, very useful to know about. And I hope you will like it 8. Transition out effect: Hey, welcome. We will not build our animation ourselves. We will make aftereffects do. It's for us. At least once in our life after effects will do something automatically for us and and by having this scene selected, I'll go to effects transitions, and I'll use the Irish wife. I'll use IRAs, wife and where I have my play head at about five seconds. And remember that new scenes will overlap here. So you will have only about five seconds to watch this photograph. But I think that's enough. We want to have a very consistent and short showcase. Okay, at five seconds, I see I'm not precise. Page down, page down, page down, five seconds sharp. I want to create a key frame here and a key frame at the rotation. When it comes to the Irish points, I want eight points because I was like a rectangle Toby here. From here I have those two key frames, but going forward to the end of the composition, the outer radius needs to close the entire composition for me. Now you can see if the Irish points are so set to six. It's a triangle. If it's eight, it's a rectangle. And I want a needle rotation while all that happens. So I will select 1 80 degrees. Now you can see what happens. This transition works as follows, and here at the end, you need to make sure that the outer radius will be pick enough to to cover the entire screen. Okay, so you have a simple information like this, a nice, snazzy transition. And I want those key frames. Right Click key frame assistant. Easy, Eastham. Now, I have prepared my transition out effect, and it will be very simple to just take it. Go here and copy it over. We could also create a mask. Your and the mess could do this for us. And we would need to duplicate the mask each time we set a new scene. But both ways are a little bit convenient and inconvenient at the same time. So I'll make it like that because I don't want to make this animation complicated. I just wanted to make a very simple para Lexus light show with a glass effect over it. Come on to the next lesson, and we'll finally duplicate and organized all five photographs 9. Showcase the slideshow: Okay. I'm really happy we are able toe finalize this project by going toe project. And by finally duplicating the scenes. So I need five scenes because I have five photographs. Control de Control de Control de Control de the same for photographs. 1234 I need to open them all. I can shift, click on them and select and double click on them and all are opened. So photograph number two. Old click. Replace photograph, number, tree. Replace photograph number four, replace and photographed. Number five simply take. I need to click it first. Replace. Okay. Are photographs are ready Now what we have to do, we have to put this open up the scenes and change the photographs within the scene. Boom. Scene 345 Photo over three, Photo four and photograph five. Okay, this is it. We are done with our slideshow. I can close the scene and now I can take Seem to I want to position it like that because at this point it starts to reveal the second photograph. And I want the second photograph Toby immediately visible and to immediately happen on the screen. What school? Here that we started our animation right at the beginning. So no matter if you are on the beginning in the middle or at the end of this photograph, there's always something happening in the screen. I really do like this. And as it goes forward, you can see the next thing is happening. What we will need to do. We will need to copy the iris y perfect. But before I do this, I want toe place all the scenes here since 345 Now go to scene one effects and controlled. Or maybe I'll place it like this. So it's adjusted. Mm. I'll place my key. Might play hit here. Seeing the one coffee, I was wiped. Paste, paste, paste, paste. You see, effects are appearing and what's cool here As a press you I can see where the key frames are. OK like this. Like this. Like this, Like this. And perfect. Our slideshow in that regard will be ready now. Finally, we arrived at the point where we can preview are slight show everything should be ready and we should enjoy what we created. Okay, I see. We are enjoying it so much that we make a little mistake here. But that was only my mistake. And I can imagine what happens here. It was because I was shifting this play head and working with the key frames. And since 40 seconds is such a big composition as I come closer, the problem is that I didn't check this before. And you can see this two key frames, as you see on the values 1600 as it should be. And now this bad second key frame comes in which it shouldn't. The problem here is that I need to adjust this for all the compositions now, because this was my mistake. I'm sorry. This should be done before you actually copy this effect. But you know my mistake. Nomis day. OK, now, imagine if we had 100 photographs, but if we had 100 photographs, we would not be doing such a mistake because we would need to work differently and approach this a lot more careful. Since I knew that I am working only with five photographs. This is the slide show I want to create. And I won't at first to make sure that my five photographs work without problem. And yeah, they I see they work without any problems. I'm really perfect here, but I still hope that you enjoy this little slide show making technique because it's a It's a great technique to know in after effects and going from there, you can create really more advanced animations. And if you will like this one, this module, I'll expand a pound that, and we'll try to create a more advanced slideshow. I I really like this simple one. It's pleasant. What? It's not complicated, and it really looks nice. 40 I and your friends would be surely amazed if you said to them that you created this light show. 10. Add particles for flavour: I would like to show you. How can you make a few more color adjustments or over our flavor adjustments? Maybe let's start with very simple particles. Aftereffect has a few built in particle effects, and as you write particle, we have particle world and particle systems to both are rather similar, and they seem complicated. But we will only use a few options. Please create a new solid because particles need to be created on something. So I also like new. I clear it a new solid. The color really doesn't matter. But I will stay white and I'll call this particle. And at first I'll place CC, so I'll know that these are my color correction layers, which I have at the beginning of this presentation. Okay, now let's double click on this effect and you see how crazy this. But let's just go from the start. The birth rate is how many of them are created, so I think two will be completely enough. Longevity is how many seconds an actual little particle lifts, so two seconds is a little bit long, so I will select about 1.5 because I don't want a smart of them OK And you are with the first part ready. You don't have to enter here. Just go to the producer. And this in the middle is the producer and I want to spread the producer over the entire screen. I want to spread it like this. About 100. I want to spread it like this. About 100 thats much better now we need just to work a little bit toe make them Maybe not so long. Longevity will be 1.1 2nd and divert rate. I overdone it Still, let's start with 0.7. Okay, so not as much off those particles are left. And this now looks totally crazy. But don't worry about that. We will not stay like this. Close the producer, go to the next type. It will be physics Now. As for the animation, we want a more normalised animation. So it shouldn't be explosive like this or totally. It should be the direction normalized or get sideways. Those are much more clean. You see what happens as I selected jet sideways. The entire Imation is much more normal and I think I want to stay with such particles and I want to. Only a just a few things. Now, before you go to your aftereffects, Just watch. This velocity has a very strong impact. So I'll lower down the velocity to about 0.3 and it gets much more cleaner and slower. Now, we should have less gravity and more resistance because they're falling very quickly down. So I want to set the gravity toe 0.3 as well. I want to see what happens. Okay? They are now slowly falling down from the screen. And if I put the resistance to about five or 10 they will go even slower. That's not enough. Okay, I will go to 15. Yeah. You see that we can barely see those particles. And at any point that you decide that there's not enough particles. They are too slow. Make the birth rate a bit stronger. The long gravity a bit up. Maybe I made overdone it with the birth rate. One point trees. Okay. And like the last thing I want to adjust here is the color. I don't this particle to be white And the opacity they are fading out the opacity. The particle type is line, but We have different particle types here, but it seems that line looks the best from them. And the opacity 75 is OK Now we have a simple particles here, and they're a bit too much of them. They are a bit grainy, so I'll change the birth rate again to be a bit less, and I can spread them by opening the producer and upping the rate is a little bit. So these are the main options you need to know about the particle systems. You don't need to know everything and what's happening here. You want to produce one second long particles over the screen, not more. Okay, boom. And we have this very simple particle snowflake effect, which makes the entire composition of it grainy, a bit nicer to watch. It's just something to know about how to create 11. Add adjustment layers: hello and welcome at the end. Now I would create a very simple last adjustment, like a bit off color correction. So I would right click. I would select new and out select an adjustment layer. Having this adjustment layer will allow me to go to effects opening color correction and deciding if I do want to hard color correct this entire composition like changing the hue saturation its exposure to to make the color of it stronger brightness and contrast. Not in particular. I want something intense. So I am very often opting to curves because selecting curves allows me to globally change the color and saturation off this image. And it can also go to read, change the actual Retz, then separately changed greens. Maybe I'm over doing it here, okay. And change the blues. Okay, it's hard to grab. Now get closer. I want to grab blue. Okay, A bit more blue on that list and again a bit more of blue. And we made this simple car correction and I want to go toe Arditti to the global change. And maybe I made this a bit too strong, so I will go a little bit back with my changes because I don't want to ruin this composition by making changes to struck. In fact, I wanted to make it a bit more red, but it's kind of it kind of did not go my way. So I'll make those few adjustments now. Okay, I want to make it smaller again. We have this quick color corrector here. OK, I have closed the curves and let's make another one. Maybe we'll do a bit better and we can always delete. I go to effect investment effect color correction and now I don't really want to revisit the exposure because I harmed the colors. So I want to give it a little bit more exposure. I can always close down the first adjustment layer and only stay with the 2nd 1 if I only want to work with the exposure. 12. Blur like a boss: Now I would like to do one more blurry thing, and this would require me to pre composed and they're seen. I could pre compose it like that. Then I could duplicate it. I could create a masked by selecting the Ellipse stool, double clicking on it. MSG is set here and out. Select Invert. Now, as you can see, their mask would be now outwards, this object. And if I would go to this pre component to effects, I would say blur and sharpen and I would select Radio Blur and you can see what's happening outwards off this mask. I created a blur effect around it. And now, depending on how do I want the Blur toe work, it's a very nice effect. The amount may be too strong. Maybe not. You can see what's happening around here. You can do a really intense effect and what's great here. I can always open up and I can further the mask so I don't have to be so strong Here, let me come closer. Let me de select the particles because you are not seeing that and you see what happens if I have it. Zero. If I have a 20 The line is cut exactly here. If a up this value, it washes out there, the corners and the effect isn't as strong anymore, Okay? And I think this blur effect. That's really what it should to this to this composition. Of course, it's too strong because the radial blur works like that, so the entire mask should be a bit bigger. But if you do not want a spin only a zoom, you can make it lighter. Or if Breydel blur isn't what we are looking for, we can very quickly change it up. I will go to effect color and make that normal garden blur. Edit a little bit, and you can see how this blur looks OK, less of it more faded, less off it, less perfect. Now I don't really like this because this little blurry around our compulsion makes the entire animation more pleasant to watch. And I do really like those blurred corners Now. I would only at a vineyard, and I would be completely done. The vineyard could be made the same way. I would create a new shape, a big rectangle shape on a separate layer. Then I would click on the Ellipse Tool. I would select a mask and out double click on it. You can see a mask. You can see a mask being inverted. You can see MSK being feathered off course. It should be black eye. You made it by mistake. Violet, let's go to black and we have a nice vineyard and what's cool here? I can always take the shape layer, make it a little bit bigger to make the vineyard less not so strong. Then I can go t lesser. The opacity and boom Look at this. It looks far better than you did Look previously, if I have the particles in the adjustments, we have a really nice I'll call this ready slight show, and all of these are simple color adjustments. We don't need to do anything else. I can just drag and drop anything here. I can place all those layers I'll even recall or them. So I know that brown layers are adjustment layers and this is how our finalized slight show looks like off course. It takes now longer to render because we have more things going on here. But I do really hope that you do like this technique. And if you would like to create more advanced slight shows, we might explore those options because this is really something which will be always in trend. People will like that because slide shows just look good. We will create photographs our entire lives. I think this is a very great technique, and I'll really appreciate if you will give me a positive review for working through this product with you. Thank you very much for checking out this module and if you will be interested, weaken, as I said, expand upon this topic. 13. Organize and finalize: we arrived at the very end. Thank you so much for taking part in this module. The last thing I would do I would organize this product a little bit. So we only see the photographs to change because the photographs were changeable here and we could rename it. We can stay like that. What I like to do. I like to create a new folder like calling it all and placing all things here which I shouldn't touch anymore. I can, of course, go and change everything around as I want. But as for now, I think everything is preferred. This will be cold lure effect. And this is the original ready slight show. Let's make it orange. And we can always click on already slideshow. And this is where we should put everything. Now I'll control K Eddie scenes here. This compression can be edit scenes slideshow complete render here. Okay, great. So, normally, if I wanted to change this project, if I want to use it, I would render this. But I would change and added the scenes here. So I know that I have 25 seconds off this animation here. So before I would render I would go and crop it to 25 seconds. You can always extend it or make it shorter. The edit scenes. You can goto photographs here to change them. You have the photographs to put in tow. You could also create a folder like new folder and change photos here. I would create a photo like that and all the photo folders going here. Boom. You double click. You change photo number two and you would be done. I think that's enough. Now it's your turn. Please try to create a composition like that and animation like this. And I believe you will have a great deal of fun doing so See you in next. Intimations well prefer together.