you can do that with pdf files too, you just have to open them in preview and press shift+command+F. after that documents opens as a kind of slideshow and you are able to step through all the pages.

greets
dominik

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Terrific hint! Who knew? Unfortunately, this doesn't work with native Illustrator .ai files- hopefully soon.

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It would be indeed terrific if starting such a slideshow from a window in list view didn't display the images in random order.

It would be even greater if it were able to resolve aliases.

And don't mention how great it would be to be able to browse a slideshow manually without the annoying control overly popping-up every time you move to the next picture.

Apple has managed to unify slideshows between iPhoto, the Finder and Preview, meaning they're all three equally annoying and useless.

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For keyboard lovers out there, while in a Finder slideshow, pressing "i" will take you to the index of thumbnails; cursor keys to move forward/back or navigate in the index page; space-bar to play/pause or select an image in the index page; pressing "a" will display the image in actual size; pressing "f" will display the image full screen; the usual "esc" to exit. Interestingly "l" and "r" seemed to be mapped keys also but I haven't discovered their use yet.

Using the slideshow from Preview is almost an identical experience except that you can play PDF's as a slideshow, PDF's can't be shown as an index of thumbnails, only image files can be shown as an index. Preview also has an extra button in the slideshow pop-up for moving the currently viewed image (again not PDF) over to iPhoto.

Finally, if you hate the pop-up appearing as you navigate, and you have a PDF presentation in Preview, just click once on the background area and then leave the mouse alone - the keyboard navigation will now work without making the pop-up re-appear.

Finally, finally, Preview has some extra preferences for it's default behavior. Notably: Open all images in one window; open groups of images in single window; open each image in it's own window. If you have several/many images in a single window you can simply drag reorder them in the draw to make any fickle sequence you may want it to be in today ;-)

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I think I know what the l and r keys are for: rotation. In an application where rotating images is permitted (iphoto ? mail ?), l would rotate to the left and r to the right. Haven't tested this, though.

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Another feature to help slideshows, if you have a number of images (not a PDF) open in a Preview window's draw, as well as being able to drag reorder the images you can also ctrl-click to show a contextual menu for Sort by: name, path, date, size, kind, keyword, custom*. If you pick one of these the draw is reordered and that specific bit of sort information is shown under each image name.

*custom appears to be unavailable

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Complain, Complain, Complain...Oh wait a minute this is a hints website. I almost forgot.

So that being typed, here's a hint for ya Spartacus...Don't use it. Pretty simple if you ask me. If you have a better idea tell Apple. As far as I'm concerned this is a great feature.



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I think the slideshow is great if there only was some way of getting rid of that overlay navigation when you navigation with cursors (that goes for iPhoto as well).

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For anyone out there using iLife '05, do previews/slideshows display for RAW images? I have Tiger but not iLife '05 and RAW is not supported. Thanks!

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As much as anyone tries to make it otherwise, it is important to remember that RAW isn't a file type, it is a description of the contents of a file. Every camera manufacturer has their own "RAW" format. As such the make and model of your camera should be a key part of your question.

That said, I don't have iLife5, but the RAW files produced by my digital rebel are supported by Tiger (I can do slideshows and open them in Preview). Preview will even do simple conversions.

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Yes, it does appear to be working now. My apologies for speaking too soon.

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I to have wanted this feature for a _long_ time. I was very excited when I tripped over it. I only have two additions that I'd like to see.

First, it would be nice if it wasn't just hidden in a contextual menu (or in the results of a search, which gives you a nice little button). I browse photographs enough that I'd like to be able to add a nice little button right to my finder windows rather than having to select the images first.

Second, I'd like to be able to do some simple file management from within the slideshow. Mostly I just want the ability to delete files (move them to the trash). I frequently will shoot a whole bunch of photos and then weed out the dross, and this would be a very convenient way to do that.

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Try GraphicConverter. There is a nice little droplet. Drag your folder over the droplet script, opens as a slide show. Lots of controls and settings available. Trash pictures as you see them with a click. Create aliases in different folders with a click.

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...or you can try CocoViewX, or Slides!, or Footagehead ... all of which are nice freeware apps that feature slideshows that let you delete photos while you view them, and more.

GraphicConverter is also nice. I've purchased it. But it's a tad slow and clunky at times, and I prefer the above programs for doing what you've described.

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My favorite is Quickimage Contextual Menu Item. Does all this in the Finder and it is very fast -- no waiting for an app to load. Not sure if it works with Tiger.

Photo Tool is nice for lossless rotating, flipping etc.

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You can also use Picture Namer. It's made for quickly naming and deleting pictures downloaded from a digital camera.

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In Preview (Panther version at least), you can drag a thumbnail from the side drawer to the Trash icon in the Dock, and it will move the corresponding file. That's how I initially sort through imported images from my digital camera - just set Image Capture to open Preview once the import is complete.

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Thanks for the suggestions. I have used Graphic Converter and I find it is too slow when rendering RAW images (and I don't much of the results, either). I currently use QPict, which is a great little image management program for the budget challenged. It does give me all of the features I need.

However, I'd still love the Finder to support at the very least deletion so I could do rapid culling before involving another app...

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I noticed that feature after I installed Tiger. However, it recently STOPPED working for me!!

I can invoke the slideshow in only two ways now: open all the images in preview at once and have it display the slideshow, OR do a Spotlight search for images (not a Finder Cmd-F search) and click the slideshow button on the resulting images.

If I select a bunch of images in the finder and choose the Slideshow contextual menu, nothing happens. If I do a finder search and try to click the slideshow button on the image results group, nothing happens.

Has this happened to anyone else?

I can do the exact same search in finder or spotlight, and only the slideshow from the spotlight results works.

There is no information in the console.

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Well, at least I'm not alone: Apple Discussions: Topic: Finder Picture Slideshow

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Yea, happened to me once. Just restart Finder and slide show will work again. I logged it in Apple bug reported and it came up as a duplicate report a day later, so I guess they know about this and have a fix in the works.

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I too encountered this. I also figured out the reason it happened to my system.

Activating a screen saver on the desktop will disable the Finder's slideshow feature. Quiting and restarting the Finder will fix the problem.

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A new 'SlideShow' option also shows up in Mail.app 2 now on messages with image attachments.

The SlideShow control panel however has an additional "Add to iPhoto" button with a neat "suck" effect, similar to closing a widget (or the Docks hidden 'suck' minimize effect) when clicked. It also works with the Shift-SloMo technique. I haven't yet seen the "Add to iPhoto" button anywhere else but via. Mail's SlideShow invocation.

This was (and still is?) shown in one of the Tiger Theatre demos.

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This also works in Spotlight searches. Do a search for .jpg, select a few items via shift-click or something, and you can do the slideshow from that too!! :) Sweet.

---
-frick

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Works for me but the images are displayed as .gifs or some other lossy format, all blotchy and 256-colour like regardless of original being viewed. Anyone know of how to influence preferences for this feature?

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I noticed that one of the options when you control click is "Create an archive". It makes a .zip file of the photos you selected.

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Yup, that feature first appeared in Panther.

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It would be a great feature, but it doesn't work all the time. Often I click several times to create a slideshow, sometimes nothing happens at all. This is really annoying.
Plus, in the index (thumbnail view) it is not sorted by default and I feel like there are half of the pictures missing. But perhaps I am missing something.
Right now I can't get it to work, so I can't try it out.

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Me too... it was working fine - now nothing. Tried selecting several jpg and nothing. Any idea why???

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The slideshow seems to max out at 99 images.

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Has anyone come up with a brilliant idea to enable the slideshow contextual menu on folders and not only on selected files. It'd be great to be able to right-click a folder and launch a slideshow of its content.

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