:: Photography Tips + Tricks: creating a video out of your digital photos ::

Last time, I highlighted some creative ways of getting your digital photos onto paper. Today, I'd like to show you how to make a video/digital slideshow out of your digital photos.

Before we start, I'd like to mention a fun video app that will turn your so-so iPhone videos into fabulous vintage-y looking films reminiscent of home movies of the past. Similar to Instagram, the app 8mm allows you to use color/texture filters to create a old-timey 8mm digital movie in real time. Try it! It's a lot of fun.

8mm App | Nexvio

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Now, most people generally take more still images than videos. But how do you group all those images (and the occasional video) from your fabulous vacation together and share them with family and friends...digitally? The folks at Animoto has come up with a way for you to make and share beautiful video online.

Animoto - how it works

Choose from one of their beautifully designed video styles, personalize using music and text, and voila! you have a professional-looking movie that you could proudly share. You could create a FREE 30sec personal web-quality video, or choose a pricing plan that will allow you to make longer, higher quality videos.

Animoto - gallery

Other apps, such as Flipagram, allows you create beautiful, short video slideshows from photos directly from your camera roll or mobile albums. Great to use with Instagram or Camera+ images.

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You could also create similar video slideshows using iPhoto on your Mac. One of the issues I have with using iPhoto to create a video slideshow is that, depending on the number and quality of your images and the speed of your computer's processor(s), it could takes forever for the video to render. Meaning, once you've laid out the images, music and text together the way you want, the computer has to process the data in order to string them together. Another issue I have is, you have to first import your images into iPhoto, which for someone (like me) who stores all of my images on an external drive, it is a bit of a pain.

Apple iPhoto

So go on, try these out. Judge for yourself!