After taking many photos with a digital camera or even with your smartphone, perhaps those of your summer holidays, the best way to organize them and show them to friends is to create a video that shows a slideshow of the photos . It is therefore necessary to create a real movie in which the images scroll one after the other at regular intervals of a few seconds, possibly using transition effects between one photo and another, with the accompaniment of a soundtrack in the background.
The video can then be shared with friends or it can be burned onto a CD and viewed on a computer or TV using a common divx or mp4 player.
There are several free programs for Windows and Mac PCs to create a movie made of transition images of this kind, which reproduces the sequence of your photos using a background music and in this article we see which are the best, both from the point of view of simplicity that for speed of use and completeness.
READ ALSO: better web applications to create video presentations of photos and images
1) The Video Editor in Windows 10 creates personalized videos in a super simple way and with results that can be customized by choosing filters, animations, music, titles and duration. The app, already included in Windows 10, is the true heir to Windows Movie Maker and is worth trying first because it is really well made and satisfying for most purposes.
2) Minitool MovieMaker is a program released in 2019 with the same name as the old Microsoft Movie Maker. He would therefore like to be a clone, which makes it easy to create videos with photos, music and various effects. With a very simple and modern interface, it is one of the best on this list.
3) FlexClip App to edit videos and photos with music and writing, one of the best free solutions that you can use, released in 2019.
4) The most popular and easiest to use free program in Windows 10 and Windows 8 has been Windows Movie Maker for years. This program has now been withdrawn by Microsoft, but it is still downloadable and freely usable for excellent results.
In another article, the guide to edit videos with Movie Maker, which also works very well for applying effects to photos, even if creating a slideshow movie may not be as convenient and fast as with other programs.
5) Openshot, a complete free video editor program for Windows and Mac, of which I wrote a dedicated article, is the best of the alternatives to Windows Movie Maker and also allows you to create a photo video with music in a rather simple way. This is an almost professional level software, even if completely free, that can be used to create animations between photos, special effects and written with real-time preview.
6) PhotoFilmStrip is the program derived from the old Photostory, continuously updated also in 2017, always free (except the version as an app for Windows 10). PhotoFilmStrip creates movies starting from images in just 3 steps: select your photos, customize the effects and get the video by choosing the final format depending on whether you want to keep it as VCD, SVCD, DVD or even in FULL-HD. You can also add an mp3 audio file or background music.
I also talked about Photofilmstrip in the article on how to create transition effects with movement-zoom and with Face Movie.
7) PhotoStage Slideshow Software is a commercial program that can be downloaded in a free version for Windows and Mac with some limitations. The program, also in Italian, creates videos with photos, with music, with effects, animations and writings, giving many options to customize the various elements and a timeline and a preview pane to manage times and vision.
You can eventually save the video in different formats and resolutions, even in Full HD. Slideshows obtained with this software can be burned directly to DVD or exported to formats for PC and portable devices.
8) 4K Slideshow Maker is a program for Windows, Mac and Linux that allows you to easily create slideshows with photos on your PC or even with Instagram photos. This program, also available in a portable version, is really basic and only allows you to add photos and then music to create the final video with different formats depending on where you intend to view it.
9) DVD Slideshow seems to be the best compromise between free programs and those, more powerful, for a fee, to create videos with photos in slideshows, music and writings, also available in Italian, unfortunately no longer updated since 2013. The strengths it is the transition effects between one photo and another that can be chosen from a hundred possibilities. Music can be accompanied to the presentation of photos and borders and frames can be added to incorporate the video. Just select the photos from the Add menu, then insert an MP3 music as a background, subtle and written captions to be shown on the movie and finally save the file as a video to be copied to a DVD or uploaded to YouTube. At the end there is the option to burn a DVD or CD so you can watch the video with the photos passing one after the other, on a television via DVD player or Divx.
10) Bolide Slideshow Creator is a much more feature-free program, ideal for creating video presentations from images and photos, with transition effects, audio or background music. The program is very easy to use, it supports images of the type JPEG, JPG, BMP, ICO, EMF and WMF, it allows you to save the video even in high resolution Full HD with AVI, MKV, WMV, MP4, FLV format. There are many transition effects to choose from which are beautiful to look at: cross faders, fading out, left to right, slides from right to left, top to bottom and many others.
11) ffDiaporama is an open source program for Windows, Linux and Mac, to edit videos and photos and turn them into slideshow movies. ffDiaporama works more or less like Windows Live Movie Maker and simply requires the import of images and / or videos to start editing and merging them together. The video can be saved in several different formats, for mobile phones, for iPhone and iPad, for Youtube, in flash and in Divx (AVI and MKV).
12) Google's Picasa has been withdrawn by Google, but you can still download and install it on PC to manage your photos and also to create slideshows also with musical accompaniment and transition effects between photos.
13) Only on Windows 7, you can use the program included in the Windows DVD Maker system whose use, very easy and intuitive, is explained in the article on how to make the video DVD.
14) Only for Windows 10 you can download the Movie Maker - FREE app that allows you to create video presentations with photos, in the form of slideshows, using more than 30 transition effects. You can also add overlapping text, background music and some effects that make photos look hung.
15) Microsoft Photo Story 3.0 has been for years the easiest and fastest program to create photo slideshows. In Photostory you just need to select the desired photos, put one or more music in mp3 format and then let the video made of beautiful transition effects between the photos be created. The limitation of the program is that one movie can only be created for 300 photos . This free program was abandoned by Microsoft in 2012, so today it may seem quite old-fashioned and it would be better to move on.
16) iMovie for Mac is a free application that should already be present in the application folder or that can also be downloaded for free from the Apple website. With iMovie it is very easy to edit videos and create videos from photos and music.
Without using programs, you can also create movies and slideshows of photos and images using video montage web applications to edit and create videos, free of charge, such as Animoto, Magisto, WeVideo and others.
It is also possible to upload photos to Youtube and create a video slideshow.
In another article, then, the best apps to create videos with photos on Android and iPhone
NOTE : To be sure and sure to be able to see the videos made or the videos created, remember to use and if necessary get the video codecs to see any video file.
For programs that accept only one mp3 track, it may be useful to create a file with different music inside, combining different mp3s together.
To copy videos to CD or DVD you can use programs to burn CDs and DVDs.
As an alternative to creating a movie with photos, in another article we describe the best online services to create photo albums and photo collages also to be printed .
