Slideshows look simple and turn into an afternoon. You line up the photos, set a duration on each, drop cross-dissolves between every pair, nudge the timing, add a little motion so they do not sit dead on screen, and by the time it feels right you have repeated the same handful of clicks a few dozen times. For a twelve-photo montage that is tedious. For a hundred photos it is a reason to open a different editor entirely.
This walkthrough does it the fast way, with the Slideshow plugin from Filmit, which builds the whole thing as a real, fully editable After Effects composition. You pick a look, point it at your images, and it lays out the slides, timing, transitions, and motion in one click. Everything below is a concrete step you can follow, from install to a finished slideshow you keep tweaking by hand.
This video may reference an older version of Slideshow. Features and UI may have changed since recording.
What is the Slideshow plugin?
Slideshow is a Filmit plugin for After Effects that automatically builds slideshows. You choose a style and a few timing values, give it your photos or clips, and it generates a slideshow comp inside After Effects, with the dissolves, durations, and movement already in place. Because what it makes is a normal comp, nothing is locked: you can dive into any slide and adjust it like anything else you build by hand.
It is brand new, at v1.0.0, and it is a paid plugin that comes with a 7-day free trial. It lives in the Filmit Studio Suite, so you install it from the desktop app on your dashboard and the trial unlocks the whole growing library while you try it out.
Step 1: Install and open Slideshow
Slideshow installs through Filmit Studio, the desktop app you download from your dashboard. You do not install it on its own. Sign up, download Filmit Studio, and start the free trial, which gives you access to every plugin in the suite. Then install Slideshow from inside Filmit Studio.
Once it is installed, open After Effects and go to Window, then Extensions, then Slideshow. The panel opens docked like any other, and from here the whole build is a few clicks.
Step 2: Create a template to see it work
Before you touch your own footage, build a template so you can watch the plugin do its thing. Click Create Template and you get the controls that define the slideshow. Pick a look, say Classic, then set the cross-dissolve length, for example 0.9 seconds, choose the motion, set the image timing per slide, say 3.2 seconds, set a total length like 38 seconds, and set the number of slides, say 12.
Click Create in After Effects and it builds a template slideshow comp with placeholder slides, all timed and dissolving exactly as you set them. That is the shape of every slideshow you make from here. Now you just swap in real images.
Pro Tip: Build a template first on any new project. It shows you the pacing your settings produce before you commit real photos, so you can dial in the dissolve length and per-slide timing on placeholders and then reuse the same feel.
Step 3: Get your images in
You have two easy ways to fill a slideshow with pictures. The first is to import your own, the usual way, and drop them into a comp. The second is to source royalty-free photos and clips without leaving After Effects, using Sourcer, another Filmit plugin. Open Sourcer, search for what you need, say a set of images on a theme, and insert them straight into your comp, ten in a few clicks.
Either path gets you the same thing: a stack of image layers sitting in a composition, ready to become a slideshow. Sourcer just saves you the trip to a stock site and back.
Step 4: Build from your selected layers
With your images in the comp, highlight the ones you want, the full set you want in the slideshow, and click Use Selected Layers. Slideshow takes that selection and builds a slideshow from them, applying the look, timing, and transitions to your actual photos instead of placeholders.
That is the core move. Select, click, and you have a finished slideshow of your own images, laid out and animated, in one step. From here it is about format and transitions.
Pro Tip: Order your layers in the timeline the way you want the slides to play before you click Use Selected Layers. The selection drives the sequence, so a little tidying up front saves you repositioning later.
Step 5: Pick a format for where it is going
A slideshow headed for social wants a different shape than one headed for a 16:9 timeline, and Slideshow handles both. Click the 9:16 format and it rebuilds the slideshow vertical, auto-filling the frame so your photos fill the tall canvas. Prefer a tighter, zoomed-in framing instead? Set fill to none and it frames the images that way.
Need the same slideshow at full resolution for everything else? Switch the format to 4K 16:9 and click Create in After Effects, and it builds a 4K copy of the same slideshow at that size. You are not rebuilding by hand for each destination, you are flipping the format and letting it make the version you need.
Pro Tip: While you are still trying looks and timings, build at the smaller size and leave 4K for the final pass. Rendering 4K eats processing power, so iterating at a lighter resolution keeps the previews snappy.
Step 6: Build a big slideshow from a folder
When you have a whole folder of media to turn into a slideshow, skip the manual import. Click Choose Image Folder, point it at a folder of photos or video clips, and confirm. Slideshow pulls everything in and imports it for you, then builds the slideshow from the lot. Because it works with video too, that folder can be clips, stills, or a mix.
Pick a transition that suits the content, for example slide varied, which gives you sliding animations between slides rather than a plain cross-dissolve. Click Create in After Effects, and while you are iterating leave 4K off to save processing power. This is how you build long slideshows fast: a four-minute-plus slideshow comes together in a click or two, all inside After Effects instead of another editor.
Step 7: Reposition any photo by hand
Because every slideshow it builds is a real After Effects comp, fine-tuning is just normal After Effects work. If a photo sits off-center or you want a subject framed differently, jump into that slide's column or pre-comp and reposition it there, exactly as you would adjust any layer.
Worth being clear on the limits: Slideshow has no AI and no automatic face or subject detection, so framing a particular photo is a manual nudge, not an auto-crop. And reordering whole slides by dragging is not in v1.0.0 yet, a dedicated board mode for that is planned for a later update.
Key takeaways
Slideshow turns a slideshow into a look you pick and a folder you point at, then hands you back an editable comp.
Every slideshow lands as a normal After Effects composition you can dive into and adjust by hand.
Highlight images and click Use Selected Layers, or point Choose Image Folder at a folder and it imports and builds for you.
Flip to 9:16 for social or 4K 16:9 for everything else and it rebuilds a copy at that size.
Looks like Classic, Modern, Cinematic, and Reel, plus cross-dissolve or slide-varied transitions, across stills and clips.
A four-minute-plus slideshow comes together in a click or two, all inside After Effects instead of another editor.
Get started with Filmit
Slideshow installs through Filmit Studio, the desktop app you download from your dashboard to manage every Filmit plugin for After Effects and Premiere Pro. It comes with a 7-day free trial that unlocks the whole growing plugin suite, and one install puts Slideshow in your editor and keeps it current. If you want the bigger picture before you build, read our intro to the Slideshow plugin.
To fill a slideshow without leaving After Effects, pair it with Sourcer, our stock-media search panel, and pull royalty-free photos and clips straight into your comp. The whole suite runs under one subscription, and the team is on Discord for questions.
