Photo Story 3 Process Description

There are so many of us out there with hundreds of photographs either collecting dust in boxes or albums, digital dust on our hard drives and not a clue of what to do with them.  Every few months or even years we pull them out and look through the photos and laugh or cry or just get melancholy at the memories the pictures bring back.  In this digital age there has to be a better way to relive our memories…and there is.

Microsoft® has a program called Photo Story 3 (PS3) available to anyone running a valid copy of Windows XP or Vista and using at least Windows Media Player 10.  This software is free, fairly simple to use and can be downloaded from the Microsoft® web site.  (Just search for Photo Story in your favorite search engine and follow the links to the download.)  Using PS3 you can create amazing movies to watch on your computer or burn to a DVD and watch on your television.

The first thing you have to do is get your photographs on your computer.  If you own a digital camera that’s pretty easy to do.  If, instead, you have paper photographs you will either have to scan them into your computer yourself, or have them scanned onto a CD or DVD by a scanning service.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed the program it’s easy to get started turning your photo memories into visual daydreams.  There are only a few steps involved in creating your movie:

1. Import and Fix your pictures – This is where you bring your pictures into PS3 and fix any problems there might be with any of the pictures.  For example, you can adjust the color and contrast levels on older faded photos, you can fix red eye, you can rotate photos or you can crop unwanted areas out of photographs.

2. Add Titles and Effects – Here you can add a caption, i.e. the date of a photo or a specific event, and you can add a special effect to the picture if you desire.  For example, give the picture a sepia tone.

3. Add Motion, Transitions and Narration – In this step you can add specific motion to a picture, such as panning and zooming.  You can also choose how to have the picture transition to the next picture by fading or pinwheel in or out.  There are 48 transitions included with PS3 to choose from.   You can also add your own narration to a picture if you choose.

4. Add Background Music – Get creative and add relevant background music to your movie from the MP3, WAV or WMA collection on your PC or let PS3 create some MIDI music for you, choosing the genre, style or mood you are looking for.

5. Make your movie – Choose a profile to make your movie for playback on a computer, to send as an email, or as a file you can burn to a DVD later.

Now you can watch your memories come to life on your computer or TV screen.  You can even easily share your photographs with family and friends.  Creating much more enjoyable ways to reminisce.

Greg Bilik
Creating Daydreams

Our second tutorial is already in the works. Enter your name and email above to receive information as the 2nd tutorial progresses.

In the 2nd tutorial learn how to:
Use Photoshop Elements to add flair to your movies.
Edit audio using the Audacity software.
Create some special effects for your movies.
Combine Photo Story with Movie Maker.