How do I stop photos from cropping and zooming in slideshow mode on iMac?

sungyle wrote:

Product: macOS, M3 iMac, i9 iMac

Category: Photos > Slideshow

Subject: "Play Slideshow" randomly zooms or crops photos

Message:

I’ve encountered a problem with the Photos app on macOS when using the “Play Slideshow” feature.

Instead of displaying the full photo, it randomly zooms or crops each image — often cutting off faces or changing the composition entirely.

This does not happen when I use the “Create Slideshow” option, which respects the original framing.

I believe this may be an unintended change in how “Play Slideshow” behaves. I’d appreciate it if the original behavior — where images are shown in full, without arbitrary zooming — could be restored.

This feature is especially important for viewing family photos, and the current zooming behavior ruins many meaningful moments.

Eddie

you can submit your Apple Feedback direct to the Product Team here:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/photos/

You are right, that the instant slideshows created from an album have changed considerably in macOS 15 Sequoia. Previously the have been slideshows, where we had some controls. In Sequoia it is very different - the instant slideshows have been combined with the "Memory" feature, just like on the iPhone all along. When we select an album and play it as a slideshow, we are creating a Memory movie from the album, with exactly the same problems as the memory movies are having- the artificial intelligence is cropping and tiling some photos, messing up our own composition of the photo, and adding unwanted panning and zooming, all with a background sound track that cannot be disabled.

Nevertheless I am occasionally using the instant slideshows, because they are the only way to have a slideshow, where some of the Live Photos are displayed as animated and not as still frames.

See the paragraph "Create a quick slideshow" (Create slideshows in Photos on Mac – Apple Support):

"Note: Your slideshow is automatically saved as a memory. To view it later, click Memories in the sidebar."

sungyle wrote: … I am happy for you.

Unsurprisingly, sarcasm doesn't go very far when you ask people for help. I think both of us pointed out that this isn't an intrinsic part of Sequoia, and there is no "unintended change in how “Play Slideshow” behaves," which is exactly what you asked about. We have also pointed out that the Slideshow Project is the serious way to do a slideshow. Neither of these require a snarky response.

You also haven't let us know anything else you've tried, so try these steps:

• Restart the computer (of course)
• Re-start in Safe Mode. This bypasses certain potentially disruptive processes, and it often helps. Safe Mode is different for different computers, so see this:

           Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support 

• Use another library if you have one, or make a small test Library with a few pictures in it and see if the same thing happens. You can create a new Library by closing Photos and then option-clicking on the Photos icon.
• Make a new user and see if the same problem recurs with it.  This is a bit harder, because a new user can't access a different user's stuff. You would need to move your Library out of your own user's folder up to the general "Users" folder. 
• Rebuild your Photos Library--close Photos and re-launch by option-command-clicking the app icon.

The idea is to find out if the problem is with the Library, with your account, or with caches and login items, and stuff like that. One of these steps may fix the problem, but their failure to work also helps figure out what's happening.

Let us know what happens…

sungyle wrote:

Subject: "Play Slideshow" randomly zooms or crops photos

What theme are you using?

Just tried a 10 photo slideshow withina 55,000 photo library and it worked fine. No coping or random zooming.

What it did do occasionally, like some themes, is changed the layout from one photo to 2 and changed transitions form fading in/out to slide from the right to just snap into the next photo. Portrait oriented photos were displayed with greyed out left and right sides to fill out the screen. All normal for slideshows but, unfortunately not user controlled.

As Old Toad describes, the File>Play Slideshow option makes decisions for you about how to display images, using a Ken Burns effect, I think, as well as a variety of transitions. It seems OK to me until it starts showing multiple image collages, which I (and I bet lots of people) dislike. That's why we don't use File>Play Slideshow. For a slideshow, the best choice is File>Create>Slideshow>Photos, which offers lots of options.

I just went back and again tried File>Play Slideshow, and I noticed that, on 30 images, it only did the multiple image thing once-- not as bad as I remember. And I always mute the music!

léonie wrote: … You are right, that the instant slideshows created from an album have changed considerably in macOS 15 Sequoia.

I miss being able to use the simple slideshow for previewing sets of slides! I've certainly left feedback.

If you want more control over slideshows create a slideshow project so you can select the theme you want and have more control.

What you're doing is not user controlled.