How to make a celebration of life slideshow, step by step

First, ask whoever is running the day (the funeral director, the celebrant, or the family member organizing it) how the slideshow will be used. A celebration of life often has two uses: a silent or softly scored loop while guests arrive and mingle, and a photo tribute that everyone watches together during the program. Ask how many minutes the tribute gets. One song of about four minutes holds roughly 30 to 40 photos, and that number tells you how many to collect.

Second, ask the venue what it can play and when it needs the file. A funeral home usually has a computer and a screen. A restaurant, community hall or backyard may only have a TV with a USB port, or nothing at all, in which case you bring a laptop. Ask whether the sound runs through the room's speakers, and who will press play. Many venues like to have the file a day or two ahead so they can test it.

With those answers you can enter the start time and the length of the service in the running order. You see straight away whether the sections you plan fit inside that time, and at what time each one comes up.

When the memorial service is the day after tomorrow, one photo tribute set to one song is enough. Choose a song of three to four minutes and about thirty photos you already have on your phone. Skip the welcome loop, the speaker slides and the closing loop; the service runs fine without them. A memorial slideshow of that size can be ready in about an hour.

Combine the first two sittings: invite one or two people who answer quickly and choose the song while you wait. In the simple view you can ask the assistant in plain words to set up the sections, so that all you do is pick photos and a song. If you end up with too few photos for the length of the song, the set simply plays through once more; you can also trim the song.

Add up the lengths of the songs and compare the total with the time you were given. Three four-minute songs already take twelve minutes of the program. If that is too much, you can trim a song instead of dropping it.

Choose the music before the photos. The length of the song decides how many photos fit in a section, because a photo stays on screen for 8 seconds at most. Phone videos can sit between the photos: a clip keeps its own length and the photos share the rest of the song, which is how a funeral photo slideshow becomes closer to a memorial video.

The plan starts with what is out of your hands. Photos from other people rarely arrive within the hour, so the invitation goes out first. While you wait, you do the work that needs no photos at all: the structure and the music.

Every sitting can be done on whatever device is nearby. It runs in the browser on a phone, tablet or laptop, with nothing to install. iPhone photos (HEIC), JPEG, PNG and scans of old prints can be added as they are; no converting needed.

The first three sittings cost nothing. Making, editing and watching the preview with music is free; the preview carries a light watermark. You pay once, at the moment you download, with no subscription. If you want to see whether making a celebration of life slideshow yourself is realistic before the family decides, you can simply work through those three sittings.