Slideshow video maker

1. Add your photos: choose them, drop them on the tool or paste them. Drag them into order, or use the arrows on a phone.
2. Pick the shape for where it's going, and whether photos of another shape fill the frame (cropped, with a slider to keep faces in) or show whole on a blurred copy of themselves.
3. Set the pace: seconds per photo, a gentle or livelier zoom and pan, and crossfades, slides or straight cuts between them.
4. Add captions and music. Write a line on any photo, choose a song (MP3, M4A or WAV) or the example tune, and set where it starts, its volume and its fades.
5. Make the video and download the MP4: 30 frames a second, H.264 with AAC sound where your browser can make them.

For the whole process, from picking photos to posting, see how to make a slideshow video.

About 3 seconds a photo suits most slideshows. It's long enough to take in a picture and short enough that the next one arrives before attention drifts. Ten photos at 3 seconds make a 30-second video.

• 1 to 2 seconds for a fast montage cut to a beat: a trip, an event, a before-and-after run.
• 3 to 4 seconds for most photos, with a gentle zoom so nothing sits dead still.
• 4 to 6 seconds for a photo with a caption, so the words can be read, and for the first photo if it carries the hook.

Any photo can have its own length. Or tick Fit to the music's length and every photo gets an equal share of the song, so the video ends when it does. Crossfades and slides take up to 0.6 seconds, shared between the two photos, so they don't make it longer.

On 9:16, captions stay inside the area that TikTok's, Reels' and Shorts' buttons and text leave clear. Check a video against them with the safe zone checker, or against each app's limits with the video size checker.

TikTok's Photo Mode posts up to 35 photos as a carousel: they play one after another with a sound you pick in the app, and viewers can swipe through them at their own pace. It's quick, and it only lives on TikTok. Instagram can also make a reel from photos in the app.

A slideshow video is one file you control: how long each photo shows, the motion, the transitions, captions in your own words and where they sit, and the music. The same MP4 posts to TikTok, Reels, Shorts and Facebook. Post both on TikTok and see which your viewers watch longer.

The music in your file has to be yours to use. A commercial song you haven't licensed can get a video muted, blocked or claimed, and businesses are held to tighter rules: TikTok says businesses can't use its general music library commercially and points them to its Commercial Music Library, and Instagram says some business accounts don't get its music library at all.

• The example tune here is made up by the tool itself, so it's free to use anywhere.
• YouTube's Audio Library has royalty-free tracks that YouTube says won't be claimed through Content ID; some ask you to credit the artist in the description.
• A trending sound is best added in the app: make the slideshow with no music, upload it, and pick the sound there. To mix a song under a video you've already made, use add music to video.

Want words over a video rather than a photo? The add text to video tool has the same caption styles.