So you’ve downloaded a free copy of Microsoft Photo Story 3, as talked about in an earlier blog, and are ready to begin making your slideshow. Where do you start? The purpose of this blog is to help you get started organizing your photos before you start importing them into Photo Story.
Select a topic
It is always a good idea to have a topic in mind of the type of slideshow you want to create. Maybe the slideshow will be about your vacation last year to Mt. Rushmore or the latest family birthday party. Selecting a topic will make it easier for you to choose the photos you want to include, as well as make it easier on your viewers to watch the slideshow. If you have just a few photos you want to show, you may be able to combine topics into one slideshow. I don’t recommend just throwing together a slideshow of a bunch of random pictures, unless that that is the effect you are going for.
Limit the number of photos in the slideshow
I have sat through a number of interesting and even entertaining slideshows that by the end dragged on a bit too long. While you could probably look at photos of your children or family pet for hours, others may not have such the attention span. Limiting the number of photos you include in your slideshow will help keep the attention of your viewers.
The number of photos you should include depends on the length of time each photo is displayed and how long it takes to transition between pictures. The default for Photo Story 3 is to display pictures for five seconds with a transition lasting one second. So, you’re looking at least six seconds per photo, if you use the defaults. A slideshow consisting of 75 photos, for example, averages a viewing length of about seven and a half minutes. A good rule of thumb is to keep each slideshow under about 8 minutes. After about 8 minutes, it is easy for viewers to loose interest in the topic, even if they are viewing some of the greatest digital photos ever taken.
Organize your photos on your hard disk drive
After you have selected the photos you want to use, I recommend organizing them into one folder on your hard drive. That way, when it is time to import your pictures into Photo Story 3, you won’t have to go searching all over your computer for them. If you are really up to the task, you may want to rename each picture to describe what it is about. You can even number the photos as to the order you want them to appear in the slideshow. Then, when you begin organizing the photos in your slideshow, you won’t have to look at each one to determine what it’s about.
Now that you have selected and organized your pictures, you are ready to begin importing them into Photo Story 3. We’ll cover that in the next blog.