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Freevisuals
Free After Effects slideshow template with 85 media placeholders, works with photos or video, no plugins required. Full HD, CS5.5+
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Most slideshow templates force a choice between two limitations, either they only accept photos, or they only accept video, leaving editors to build a second, separate sequence when their project genuinely needs both. Slideshow, a free After Effects template by FixMotion available through Motion Array, solves this directly, working with either photos or video clips interchangeably across a genuinely large set of 85 media placeholders, giving editors a single, unified template flexible enough for almost any fast-paced, dynamic slideshow project.
If you're building a broader slideshow or promo project around this template, our After Effects templates library covers additional formats to pair with it, and for music suited to fast-paced, dynamic slideshow content, Artlist and Epidemic Sound both carry upbeat, energetic tracks well suited to this kind of format. For a complementary color treatment across your slideshow's media, our free LUT library is also worth a look.
Most free slideshow templates top out somewhere between ten and twenty placeholders, enough for a short highlight reel but not nearly enough for a genuinely thorough project, a full event recap, an extended product catalogue, a large photography portfolio. Slideshow's 85 placeholders puts it in a different category entirely, giving editors room to build something considerably more thorough without needing to daisy-chain multiple separate templates together or manually duplicate placeholder groups to reach the capacity a larger project actually needs.
This matters particularly for the specific use cases this template's own tagging suggests it's built for, production demo reels, travel slideshows, special events coverage, categories where the underlying source material often runs into the dozens or even hundreds of individual photos and clips. Having a single template already structured to handle this volume, rather than needing to extend a smaller template well past its originally intended capacity, saves considerable setup time on any project with a genuinely large amount of source material to work through.
A template restricted to one media type or the other forces an artificial constraint onto source material that rarely sorts itself so neatly in practice. Most genuinely thorough projects, a wedding, a corporate event, a travel recap, naturally produce a mix of both, some moments captured as stills, others as short video clips, and a template that only accepts one or the other means manually separating and often discarding perfectly usable material simply because it doesn't fit the template's specific format requirement.
Slideshow avoids this limitation entirely, with each of its 85 placeholders accepting either a photo or a video clip interchangeably. This flexibility means editors can build a single sequence using genuinely everything available, rather than needing to choose a media type upfront and exclude material that doesn't match, or build two separate sequences and stitch them together manually afterward.
The large placeholder capacity and mixed media support make this template particularly well suited to event coverage, where source material often spans dozens of photos and clips captured across a full day or multi-day occasion.
Travel content specifically benefits from this template's capacity, letting editors build a genuinely full trip recap from a large photo and video library rather than needing to aggressively cut down to fit a smaller placeholder count.
Creative professionals building a demo reel or portfolio showcase can use this template's fast, dynamic pacing and large capacity to present a substantial body of work within a single, cohesive sequence.
Businesses with a genuinely large product range can use this template to showcase multiple items within one promotional sequence, rather than needing separate content for each individual product.
The template's own tagging specifically references modern fashion promo and luxury-style use cases, suiting brand content wanting a fast, stylish, contemporary visual treatment.
Head to the download page and grab the project files through Motion Array.
Unzip the downloaded folder into a dedicated project directory, keeping it organized alongside your other project assets.
Open the .aep project file directly in After Effects. The template supports CS5.5 and above, so compatibility issues should be minimal across most current installations.
Browse the project's composition and layer structure to understand how the modular sections are organized, since this affects how you'll approach trimming or extending the sequence.
Drag your own photos and video clips into the template's 85 designated placeholder layers, mixing media types freely since each placeholder accepts either format.
Update the 11 available text fields with your specific titles, captions, or supporting copy.
Use the template's easy color change controls to align the result with your specific branding or desired aesthetic, without needing to manually recolor individual elements one at a time.
Since the template is built modularly, adjust its overall length by trimming sections you don't need or extending others, rather than being locked into the default 51-second runtime.
Play through your composition to confirm every element, media, text, color, timing, looks and functions correctly together.
Once you're happy with the result, render and export using your project's standard delivery settings, taking advantage of the template's fast render optimization.
Rather than being built as one continuous, fixed-length sequence, Slideshow's modular structure means its various sections can be trimmed, rearranged, or extended independently, giving editors genuine flexibility over the final runtime rather than being locked into the default 51-second length. This is a meaningfully different approach from templates built as a single rigid timeline, where adjusting overall length often means manually recalculating timing across every subsequent element to avoid throwing off the whole sequence.
This modularity is particularly valuable given the template's large 85-placeholder capacity, since different projects will naturally need very different portions of that full capacity. A smaller event recap might only need 20 or 30 placeholders filled, while a fuller travel slideshow might genuinely use the full 85. The modular approach means both use cases are supported by the same template without needing separate versions built for different scales of project.
Overloading the sequence with weak or redundant media purely to fill placeholders. With 85 slots available, resist the temptation to include every available photo regardless of quality, curate for your strongest material instead.
Ignoring color consistency between photo and video placeholders. Since the template mixes media types freely, inconsistent color treatment between your photos and video clips can make the sequence feel visually disjointed.
Leaving default placeholder text visible in a published video. Always confirm all 11 text fields have been updated with your specific content before finalizing.
Not taking advantage of the modular trimming options. If your project doesn't need the full 51-second default runtime, use the modular structure to trim rather than padding out a shorter project unnecessarily.
How To Use Motion Graphics In Your Videos, Video Editing Tutorial For Beginners, useful background on incorporating a motion graphics template like this one correctly into a finished slideshow project.
Managing 85 individual media placeholders can feel genuinely overwhelming without a bit of upfront organization, and building a simple system before you start dragging files in saves considerable time compared to working reactively. Organizing your source photos and clips into a numbered folder matching your intended sequence order, before opening After Effects, means the actual placeholder-filling process becomes a simple matter of working through your pre-organized folder in sequence rather than making sequencing decisions on the fly while also managing the technical replacement process.
For projects using anywhere close to the full 85-placeholder capacity, it's also worth reviewing your selected media as a complete set before finalizing, checking for jarring quality inconsistencies, repetitive or overly similar shots sitting too close together, and confirming your strongest material is distributed thoughtfully throughout the sequence rather than clustered entirely at the beginning or end.
Given the template's genuine flexibility in both media type and placeholder count, it's worth thinking specifically about how to scale your approach to match your actual project rather than defaulting to either extreme. A smaller, tightly curated project might use just 15 to 20 of the available placeholders, taking advantage of the template's polish and pacing without needing anywhere near its full capacity. A genuinely large project, a full wedding day, an extensive travel trip, a large product catalogue, can scale up toward the full 85 placeholders, using the modular structure to extend the runtime accordingly.
Neither approach is inherently more correct than the other, the right scale depends entirely on how much genuinely strong source material a specific project actually has. Forcing a small project to stretch across too many placeholders dilutes its impact with weaker filler content, while artificially constraining a genuinely large project to a small placeholder count leaves compelling material unused. Matching the template's scale to your project's actual content, rather than defaulting to either extreme, produces the strongest result.
While the template is specifically optimized for fast rendering, it's worth understanding that a project genuinely using a large portion of its 85-placeholder capacity, particularly one mixing in a substantial number of video clips rather than static photos, will naturally take longer to render than a smaller, more modest sequence. Video placeholders carry considerably more processing overhead than static image placeholders, since each frame of video footage needs to be processed individually rather than a single image simply held in place for a set duration.
For editors working with tighter deadlines on a genuinely large project, it's worth doing a rough test render early in the process, filling perhaps a quarter of the placeholders and timing how long that portion takes to render, then extrapolating roughly what the full sequence might require. This kind of early estimation helps avoid an unpleasant surprise late in a project timeline, discovering only at the final render stage that a full 85-placeholder sequence with heavy video content takes considerably longer than anticipated to complete.
Since Slideshow works from both photos and video, it pairs naturally with supplementary content from other free resources when your own source material needs a bit of additional support. If a specific placeholder needs a transition, an establishing shot, or supplementary B-roll beyond what you've personally captured, our free stock video library is worth browsing for options that can slot directly into this template's flexible media placeholders alongside your own original content.
This kind of supplementary sourcing is particularly useful for projects aiming to use a large portion of the template's 85-slot capacity but working from a more limited pool of original material, letting editors round out a genuinely full sequence without needing every single placeholder filled exclusively with self-captured content.
85, each accepting either a photo or a video clip.
11 editable text fields for titles, captions, or supporting copy.
Full HD, 1920x1080.
CS5.5 and above, including CS6, CC, CC 2015, CC 2017, and CC 2018.
No, it's built to work entirely within standard After Effects.
Yes, it's available as a free download through Motion Array.
No, the template's modular structure supports trimming, so smaller projects can use only the portion of the template's capacity they actually need.
Yes, it uses Universal Expressions, meaning it functions correctly regardless of which language version of After Effects you're running.
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