Lars,

Unfortunately those “fancy” themes are extremely limiting in the controls that you have, and they are randomly generated. There’s no controlling if you have 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 images on screen at once (referring to the “Reflections” theme specifically here), and if you select the same group of photos and make three slideshows in a row, all three will have different patterns.

What you can do is rearrange the order of the slides in the timeline, so if you wanted image A to be in a slide on it’s own, you could find the previous/next solo slide and move image A into its place—but that’s about it.

I know the limitations are frustrating, and hopefully this will grow in future releases. I think the slideshows are an under-appreciated aspect of Aperture 3, however this is precisely why. The lack of control makes them unusable for many people.

The “Ken Burns” theme is much more customizable, yes. So is “Basic”, which is, as far as I can tell, the same thing as “Ken Burns” except that the Default Settings > Crop is set to Fit in Frame vs Ken Burns, respectively.

If anyone has found a way to game the system, please let me know! That would make a fantastic video tip and I’d love to expand on it—if there’s a way.

-Joseph @ApertureExpert