# Making slides for your screens > Build a deck of slides in ScreenTinker: headlines, photos, prices, clocks and QR codes, each with an entrance. Publish it as a playlist for your screens. Source: https://screentinker.com/guides/digital-signage-slides ## Making slides for your screens You don't need a design program to put a special offer on your screens. The Slides page lets you build a deck of slides yourself: a headline, a price, a photo, a clock or a QR code, each one sliding or fading in. When you publish the deck, it becomes a playlist that any screen can play. This guide covers making a deck, adding and arranging things on a slide, how long each slide stays up, and the difference between **Save** and **Publish**. If you would rather start from a finished design, **New from template** at the top of the page opens ready-made signs (specials, opening hours, a sale) that come back here as an ordinary deck. ### Before you start - **Slides is in Advanced view.** New accounts start in Simple view, which has no sidebar. Switch with the **Simple / Advanced** buttons at the top of the menu. - **Upload your photos first.** A slide picks its photos from your **Content** library; it does not upload them itself. - **Who can edit.** Anyone in the workspace can open a deck. A member with the **Viewer** role can look but cannot save, publish or delete. ### The Slides page Choose **Slides** under **Create** in the sidebar. You see your decks, newest change first. Each line says how many slides the deck has, how long it runs in total, and whether it is **published** or **not published yet**. Two decks: one already on the screens, one still being worked on. ### Create a deck - Press **+ New deck**. - Type a **Deck Name**. This also becomes the name of the playlist when you publish. - Under **Choose Template**, pick **Blank Slide Deck**. It starts with one title slide in the 16:9 shape of a normal TV. - Press **Create Deck**. The editor opens. Blank Slide Deck is the one for menus, offers and notices. The other two templates are for special hardware: **Meeting Room Door Sign** is a small e-paper door sign that shows whether a room is free, and **Waste Collection Reminder** shows the next bin day. If you have a calendar data source, both fill their text from it. Without one, they start with sample text in your dashboard's language that you replace. ### Build a slide The editor has four parts. Along the top is the **filmstrip**, one thumbnail per slide. On the left is a column of buttons that add things to the slide. In the middle is the slide itself. On the right are four tabs, **Content**, **Style**, **Motion** and **Slide**, with a list of everything on the slide above them. A slide with a background photo, a headline and a big price. The selected line's words are in the Content tab. - **Add something** with the buttons on the left. Hold the pointer over one to see what it is: Headline, Text, Big number (for a price), Photo, Rule (a line), Panel (a coloured box), Clock, Date, Countdown and QR code. A slide holds up to 40 of them. - **Change the words.** Double-click a headline, text or big number on the slide and type. `Enter` keeps it, `Esc` cancels. You can also type in the **Content** tab. - **Move and resize.** Drag a thing to move it and drag its handles to resize it. Drag across an empty part of the slide to pick several at once. The **Arrange** bar above the slide has **Undo**, **Redo**, layer order, align and **Duplicate**; right-click on the slide for the same. - **Choose a photo**: select a photo box and pick the picture in the **Content** tab. **Fit** decides whether it fills the box (and is cropped) or fits inside it. - **Set the look** in the **Style** tab: position and size, font, text size, weight, alignment, colour and opacity. Sizes follow the screen, so a slide looks the same on a small TV and a 4K one. - **Add the next slide** with **+ Add slide** in the filmstrip. Click a thumbnail to work on that slide; double-click it to rename it. A clock or date follows each screen's own time zone and language unless you fill in **Time zone**. A countdown needs the moment it counts to, and what it should say afterwards in **Then shows**, so the slide still makes sense the day after. A QR code holds a web address; keep it on a light background or phones may not read it. ### How long a slide stays up, and its background Open the **Slide** tab. **Dwell** is how many seconds the slide stays on screen before the next one. Under **Background** you can set a **Colour**, a **Photo** or a **Video**. When there is a picture behind the words, **Dim** darkens it so the text can be read from across the room. A 10-second slide with a photo behind it, dimmed a little. The **Shape** list above the slide sets the shape you design on: **Landscape 16:9** for most TVs, **Portrait 9:16** for a screen on its side, and others. Pick the shape of the screen the deck will play on. **Music** next to it plays one track under the whole deck. #### Entrances Each thing on a slide can arrive with an entrance: fade, slide in, rise, zoom and others. Select it and open the **Motion** tab. Choose the **Effect**, then **Delay** (when it starts) and **Duration** (how long it takes). Press **▶ Play entrance** above the slide to watch them. The Timing chart shows when each thing arrives compared with the end of the slide. Keep entrances shorter than the slide If an entrance finishes after the slide's dwell time, the text never fully appears on the screen. The editor warns you with **Some motion never finishes**. Raise the **Dwell** or shorten the delay. ### Save, preview and publish The three buttons at the top do different things: - **Save** keeps your work. Nothing changes on your screens. - **Publish** saves, then sends the deck to your screens. The first time, it makes a playlist with the deck's name (its description says "Published from a slide deck"), one item per slide, each shown for its dwell time. Publishing again updates the same playlist, and every screen playing it picks up the change. - **▶ Preview** opens the player in a new tab and plays the deck as a screen would. It plays the last *published* version, so publish first. Publishing does not choose which screens show the deck. Find the new playlist in **Playlists** and put it on a screen or a group, add it to a schedule, or add it to another playlist, the same as any playlist. After Publish, the deck is a playlist like any other. Change slides in the deck, not in the playlist Make changes to the slides in the deck and publish again. Deleting a deck does not delete its playlist: screens that show it keep playing it until you take the playlist off them. Before publishing, ScreenTinker may show **Before you publish** with things that could be hard to read, such as text with too little contrast. You can go back and fix them or choose **Publish anyway**. If your workspace uses content approval, the deck has a **Submit for review** button and goes to the screens once a reviewer approves it; see [Users and roles](https://screentinker.com/guides/digital-signage-users-roles.html). ### Let A.I. draft a slide (optional) Above the editor is a box where you can describe a slide, for example "autumn sale, 40% off, bold". **Generate** writes the whole current slide for you, words and layout; on a slide you have already worked on, it asks first, because it replaces everything there. **Generate background** makes only a background picture and keeps your words. **Generate layers** makes a background plus three separate pictures that each get an entrance. The result is not saved until you press **Save**, so look at it before you keep it. These buttons need an A.I. service set up for your workspace. The gear button next to them opens **AI settings**. Without one, you see "AI is not configured. Set an endpoint and model in AI settings first." On a self-hosted server The Slides page works the same. For the A.I. buttons, you point **AI settings** at your own A.I. service, which can run on your own network. Fonts you add with **Upload a font…** in the **Style** tab are stored on your server and sent from it to every screen that shows them. The **ScreenTinker credits** choice for A.I. pictures is only there if your server's operator has set it up. ### FAQ #### I changed a slide but the screen still shows the old one. Press **Publish**. **Save** only keeps your work in the editor; screens get the deck when you publish it. #### Preview shows an older version of my deck. Preview plays what was last published, not what is on the canvas. Publish, then press **▶ Preview** again. #### I renamed my deck. Does its playlist get the new name? Yes. When you rename a deck and save it, its playlist takes the new name too. The one exception is a playlist you renamed yourself in **Playlists**; it keeps the name you gave it. #### Can one slide play only at lunchtime? Yes. Each slide is an item in the deck's playlist, so you can give it its own days and hours in **Playlists**. See [Scheduling](https://screentinker.com/guides/digital-signage-scheduling.html#item-schedules). ### Try it on your own screens Start a 14-day Pro trial on hosted ScreenTinker: up to 15 screens, every feature, no credit card. [Start your free trial](https://screentinker.com/app#/login) Or host it yourself, free and open source: [self-hosting guide](https://screentinker.com/guides/self-hosted-digital-signage.html) · [GitHub](https://github.com/screentinker/screentinker) ### Related guides - [Content and playlists](https://screentinker.com/guides/digital-signage-content-playlists.html) - [Scheduling](https://screentinker.com/guides/digital-signage-scheduling.html) - [Widgets, layouts and transitions](https://screentinker.com/guides/digital-signage-widgets-layouts-transitions.html) - [Users and roles](https://screentinker.com/guides/digital-signage-users-roles.html) - [All guides](https://screentinker.com/guides/)