- Getting the Photos onto Your Hard Drive
- Getting Started with Photo Story 3
- Importing Images into Photo Story
- Adding Titles and Effects to Your Pictures
- Adding Transition Effects, Controlling Animation, and Narrating Your Show
- Giving Your Movie a Theme Song
- Creating Your Movie
Adding Transition Effects, Controlling Animation, and Narrating Your Show
When you have a title on your screen, jump to the next screen, which enables you to add a narrative to your images (see Figure 11).
Figure 11 Each photograph can have its own narrative.
Each photograph can have a narrative added to it. All you have to do is select the highlight the Record button and begin talking into your computer microphone. Try to keep your narrations to only a couple seconds for each photograph. If you have a Photo Story that is more than 200 images, each with two minutes of narration, you run the risk of losing your audience; they will likely fall asleep around image 7.
After you have added your narration, you might notice that under the highlighted image is a button called Customize Motion. Selecting this screen opens the Customize Motion window.
The Customize Motion window has two tabs that enable you to control the animation for each screen and the transition between frames.
By default, all images fade in and out and do a funky zoom in and out. This gives your movies a sense of movement. The Motion and Duration tab lets you control the movement of the animation (see Figure 12).
Figure 12 The Customize Motion window controls motion and duration plus frame transitions.
To control the motion, select the Specify Start and End Position of Motion check box. The resize handles let you change where you want the animation to start on the left side. On the right side, highlight how much of the image you want the viewer to see. You are forcing the image to be zoomed in and then panned out.
Beneath this, you can override the default 5.0-second duration for the photograph to any time you want. If you added a narration, Duration defaults to the duration of your narration. Press the Preview button to take a quick look at the final edits in Windows Media Player (see Figure 13).
Figure 13 The Preview button gives you the chance to take a quick look at the motion and duration modifications you made.
In addition, you can modify the Transition effects. The Transition effects replace the default fade effect used to transition each frame. If you have used Windows Movie Maker, you will see some strong similarities. You can apply 48 different transitions, ranging from simple cross fades to complex image flipping (see Figure 14).
Figure 14 Each frame can use any of the 48 different transition effects.