building a slideshow with flash

Now that the animation is complete, the last step is to position the frames so that they play one after the other.

Click once on the first keyframe in the second layer.

Hold down the shift key, and select frame 44 in the last layer.

By doing this, you will have highlighted the lower three layers. Now click on the selection and drag it to the right until you reach frame 35, overlapping with the last tween segment. Careful, if you click and hold down too long without moving the mouse arrow, a contextual menu will pop up.

Be sure you are not placing the frame end-to-end, or moving them up or down. Remember, if you mess up, just press Ctrl-Z (Command-z for Mac) a few times to undo.

Compare your timeline with the image above. (We've deselected the frames to see them better). Make sure you have overlapped the tweened regions. This will create a crossfade, so as one image fades out, the next one begins to fade in.

Now repeat the following steps with the other layers, to cascade them out like stairs. You will highlight the two lower layers and drag them to the right, making sure to overlap the tweened regions.

By the time you have dragged all of the layers out, your timeline should be cascaded out as so.

To test your project, click Ctrl-Enter (PC) or Command-Return (Mac).

Analyze the slideshow above and compare it with your own. You can play with the framerate to see how it affects the speed and smoothness of your slideshow.

If you want to adjust your slideshow, you will have make adjustments to keep all of the photos in sync. This is why it is a good idea to plan out your project early.

Flash is not the best program to use to create a slideshow. We recommend using SoundSlides (view our tutorial). However, we teach people to use Flash in this way because we have found it is a great introduction to the concepts behind the Flash program, such as keyframes, tweens and symbols.

We offer a slightly more advanced tutorial on building your own Flash template, complete with buttons and media:

Tutorial on Building Your Own Flash Template.