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Neil Bothwick likes to read Linux config files at bedtime.

Q Sliding away

The Windows Photos program has a good option for amateur photographers. I can make a ‘video’ of my photos. The photos can move in a good number of ways and I can add background music that adapts automatically to the length of the video. How do I do the same thing in a Linux program? I am afraid you may answer that it is possible, but not nearly as easily.

Bob Abspoel

A What you are looking for is a way to create a slideshow from your photos. There are a few options available to you. They do not have the exact same feature set of Microsoft Photos, but they make up for what they miss out on in other areas. The first is DigiKam, the photo manager for KDE. Although it is a KDE program, it can be used with any desktop environment and should be in your distro’s package repositories. Among its wealth of features is the ability to create a slideshow from an album or selected photos. A range of transitions are available and other factors such as timing and final resolution can all be set. The main omission from your feature list is the ability to add a soundtrack, but that can be done afterwards by loading the video into a video editor, such as OpenShot.

Another option is ffDiaporama (https:// ffdiaporama.tuxfamily.org), a program designed to create slideshows from photos. The program is quite old, although there does seem to be some development going on. Old is not always bad, though – once a program does what is asked of it, further feature development could be considered bloat. The interface is easy to use and the results are good quality. However, it did seem a little unstable running it here, but that may be down to other factors on this system – it’s a bit of an overloaded workhorse.

The one closest to what you describe may be Imagination (https://imagination. sourceforge.net). This is a GTK program that does most of what you describe. With almost 70 transitions available, control over timing of slides (both individually and globally) and the options to add an audio track, Imagination should be able to achieve what you want.