Exporting a slideshow from Photos—what a nightmare

We were going to create a custom slideshow in iMovie for a family event, but hit some bugs in iMovie (with photos not importing properly), and really just ran out of times. So I thought, let's just run with a slideshow in Photos. That'll be quick and easy… right?

So I created my album of photos, and clicked on 'Slide show'. It was easy enough to configure a few options, pick some music, and have it looking pretty good. Then I looked for the export option. Hmm… Nothing visible on screen. The 'Export Slide Show' command was greyed out. And the Share button revealed nothing. I began to think, maybe it's not possible??

A trip to the Photos User Guide convinced me that it was possible. It states, 'You can export slide shows to share with others. When you export a slide show, Photos creates a movie file with the video format that you select', but it left me hanging at step 1: 'In the Photos app on your Mac, click a slide show under Projects in the sidebar.' But of course, there was no slide show under Projects in the sidebar.

Now at this point you might be saying that it's my fault for not knowing the software well enough, and not realising that there is a second, and less obvious way, to make a slideshow… by selecting 'File > Create > Slide show > Photos' (or pressing the hidden plus icon to the right of 'My Projects' in the sidebar). But seriously, why have two completely separate features—one for playing a slideshow (that you can't export) and another for creating a slideshow (that you can export)—each with a different UI that just duplicates all the same controls? Sorry, but it's just ridiculous.

So anyway, I eventually figured out how to create a slide show under 'Projects'. I configured it with all the same options and selected the same music as before, and then pressed the play icon… only to discover that all the photos were now in some kind of semi-random order. Oh no. Okay, no problem, there must be some other control that lets you put them back into date order… only there wasn't. 'You have to be kidding', I said. (Actually, that's not quite what I said, but I have to keep this fit for print.)

As time ran out on my deadline, I scrambled to manually select and drag photos around that sideways scrolling thumbnail pane and back into their correct order, but it was a mess. I got it as good as I reasonably could and hit 'Export'.

That should have been the end of it, but no. The promise of the Photos User Guide, to 'create a movie file with the video format that I select' turned out to be a bit of a cruel joke. The only options under the so-called 'Format' menu were resolution options: 480p, 720p or 1080p. The only format that it would save was M4V. Needless to say, my projector does not support this Apple format (whereas it supports the native MOV format of my iPhone videos just fine).

In the end I transferred all my photos from my iMac to my wife's laptop, and took the laptop to the event where I ran the slideshow in realtime.

I've learnt two very important lessons from this. Firstly, don't leave these things to the last minute (or even the last day) because this Apple video is not how it works in real life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9TdA8d5aaU

Secondly, Apple has lost its way when it comes to UX. Having used Macs for over 25 years, I believe they used to be the industry leader when it came to making things easy to use, but they're setting a pretty poor standard these days.