A memorial slideshow set to music, shaped one slide at a time

The Last Farewell builds a presentation out of parts that follow the service. A welcome loop shows a handful of photos on repeat while guests take their seats. During a eulogy or reading, one still photo stays up without music until the operator moves on. A closing loop runs as people leave. Between them sits the photo slideshow set to music, the one part where everyone is looking at the screen. You can make one, or two with a song each, for example the early years and the later years.

Once you attach a song, the photos spread themselves over its length. The sum is simple. A 4-minute track is 240 seconds; with 32 photos each one is shown for 7.5 seconds. Add a photo or take one out and every other photo adjusts. There is nothing to type in. If you do want one slide to stay longer, the extended view lets you give that slide its own duration and the remaining photos share what is left.

How many photos should a memorial slideshow have? Plan for 6 to 8 seconds each. That means 23 to 30 photos for a 3-minute song, 30 to 40 for 4 minutes and 38 to 50 for 5 minutes. No photo stays on screen longer than 8 seconds, so 20 photos against a 4-minute song simply play through twice at 6 seconds each. Going the other way is the more common mistake: below 6 seconds per photo, people cannot take in a group shot before it is gone. Choose fewer, or add a second part with a second song.

A memorial photo slideshow is fuller when nobody has to own every picture. Invite relatives and friends by email as helpers. They get in with their email address and a code, and add their photos to the shared collection.

You then decide which photos go into the slideshow set to music and which suit the welcome or closing loop better. That keeps the number matched to the song, even when a hundred photos have come in.

iPhone photos (HEIC), JPEG, PNG and scanned prints can all be added together. Nothing needs converting first.

Add the song as your own MP3 file and attach it to the part. If it runs too long for the photos you have, you can shorten the track rather than hunt for more pictures.

In the extended view you can look songs up on Spotify and YouTube and listen while you decide what suits the run of photos.

In ordinary presentation software you set the timing of each slide by hand and redo the arithmetic whenever a photo is added. Here the timing follows the song, so the last photo and the last bar end together. Your time goes into choosing and ordering, not counting seconds.

Everything described on this page is free to do: adding photos, adjusting each slide, placing text and playing the preview with music. You pay once, at the moment you download. There is no subscription and no payment details to enter beforehand. You can pay with iDEAL | Wero, Bancontact or card. You can download again later, for instance after a last change.

It runs in the browser on a phone, tablet or laptop. In the simple view an assistant can help when you say in plain words what you want, such as turning a photo or swapping the order. If you would rather do everything yourself, you can.