There have always been some pretty obvious weaknesses in Lightroom’s Slideshow, and assuming nothing new appears in Lightroom 4′s final release, it might be interesting to speculate on what may come down the track before too long, and to ask what people think. So in descending order of priority, for me these improvements would move the workspace from “good enough” to “best of breed”:

  1. A timeline
  2. Multiple audio tracks
  3. Transitions like Ken Burns
  4. Add video clips to slideshows
  5. One feature that would fit slideshow’s presentational role is speaker’s notes just like Powerpoint. So you would run the show and see your reminders or scripted comments on your own screen. Low hanging fruit in software terms, but very rewarding for the user whose presentation appears so much more polished.

I find people apply the term “slideshow” to three different activities – a web gallery, a Powerpoint-style public presentation, and a standalone show with separate sections, such as wedding DVDs, for example. Lightroom’s Web and Slideshow cover the first two, but not the third.

So to broaden my original enquiry, to what extent do people think Slideshow should be extended into authoring standalone shows? Like Proshow, for example, which is so popular with wedding photographers, it would allow you to create a front menu with access to individual slideshows (preparation, ceremony, reception etc) and might export to various formats – DVD, iPad etc. It’s a big extension from the current Powerpoint-style presentation that Slideshow provides, but for certain groups of users it would provide a much more efficient way to accomplish their existing workflow. Should this be a priority for 5?