Create Beautiful Photo Albums Quickly and Easily with PowerPoint

Jul 28, 2011
Angelika Ortlepp

Holiday photos are easy to make into an album with PowerPoint - Angelika Ortlepp

If you're already a PowerPoint user, this versatile software can be used quickly and easily to organize and annotate your photos into albums and slide shows

Digital cameras have made it so simple to take hundreds of photos and save money on the developing by only printing out the ones you want. However, this has also created a whole new job of downloading, sorting and arranging those photos into albums and slide shows. There are many software packages that will help you with this daunting job, but if you use PowerPoint you already have an excellent tool for creating beautiful and interesting albums. You don`t have to download or learn a new software package. It`s quick and simple and the results look great!

Using PowerPoint to Create an Album

The easiest way to start is by looking through all the photos you`ve downloaded and moving any that you want to a separate folder on your computer.

Then open PowerPoint and import all the photos at once by doing the following:

click on the Insert tab
click on Photo Album from the menu bar
in the pop up window, choose Insert picture from file
select all the photos in your new folder and import them.
choose your options in the Photo Album Import window - you can put any number of photos on a slide, add captions or titles to all of them or add special effects such as rounded corners or shadows. You can also do some simple editing of the individual photos.
Click on Create and your new album will be automatically set up for you.

Sorting and Spicing Up Your Album

You can change the order of your photos in the Photo Album Import window by using the up and down arrows below the list of your photos but you can`t see the photos as you are doing this. An easier way that lets you see what you are doing is to use slide sorter view from the View tab. You can simply drag and drop the slides to move them around.

Now you can get creative. Some ideas:

Edit the captions or titles if you chose to add these from the Photo Album Import window.
Add extra comments using the Text Box tool in the Insert tab. You can have fun with it, adding text right onto the photos themselves.
Add arrows, callouts or other shapes with the Shapes tool in the Insert tab
Edit the title slide. PowerPoint automatically sets up a title page but you can easily edit this with photos and text to make a more interesting cover page for your album.

Printing Out the Album and Setting Up a Slideshow

The slides can be printed out as 1, 2 or more to a page on regular photo paper or you can make a double sided album by using glossy brochure paper. The result makes a beautiful printed album.

You can also set the presentation up as a slide show. You can keep it simple or use some of the animation and transition features with the Set Up Slide Show tool in the Slide Show tab.

PowerPoint offers plenty of potential to use your imagination and get great results with quick and easy tools that require a minimum of time and effort.