Moreover, selecting pictures is uncomplicated, courtesy the easy to navigate File browser window with thumbnail view. A slider at the right hand top corner allows changing the size of the thumbnails. At one go, 300 pictures can be added to a single story and it supports the following file types-.bmp, .dib, .eps, .gif, .jhif, .jpe, .jpg, .pcd, .pcx, .png, .psd, .rle, .tga and .tif).
All the added pictures will be arranged in a form of a film strip at the bottom of the wizard, and you can rearrange them in any way you like.
Then, each picture can be given effects or corrected for colour and other artefacts. Photos with incongruous aspect ratio can be corrected to the ideal 4:3 aspect ratio by using the ‘Remove black border’ feature.
Step 3. Adding Title And Motion
Now you can give specific titles or captions to each photo. The text tool is similar to the one found in MS word and is also easy to grasp. You can align the text at the top, centre or at the bottom of the screen. If you missed adding effects in the previous step, you can still add those in this step using the drop down menu.
Next, you can set motion effects for individual photos and then add transitions between two images. The ‘Customise Motion’ button provides the interface to set the motion and transition effects.
Under the ‘Motion & Duration’ tab specify the start and end position of a picture’s frame to achieve the motion effect. Under ‘Transition’, choose the type of image transition to be applied such as cross fade, diagonal-inward/outward and so on.
In order to give an authentic story feel to your pictures, Photo Story 3 provides a narration tool. By using a mic along with this tool you can record a narration for your story. If you haven’t saved the project so far, save it immediately before you proceed further.
Step 4. Adding Background Music
Apart from narration, Photo Story 3 also allows you to add a background score that plays throughout the length of the story. To make your story interesting add different tracks to a range of pictures or individual pictures. The ‘Create Music’ option allows an easy integration of pre-recorded tracks in case your collection does not have a particular genre of music.
Step 5. Saving Your Story
Till this step your work of art has been saved in the .wp3 format-Photo Story’s native format that opens only in Photo Story. You can save all your projects as activities namely for Computer, E-mail, Pocket PC,
Smart Phones and Portable Media Centres in the Windows Media Audio (WMA) format too. This lets you view your photo story in Windows Media Player.