Make an E-card for your Valentine

Every February, across the country, candy, flowers, and gifts are exchanged between loved ones, all in the name of St. Valentine. On Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged annually. Now, more people prefer e-cards to deliver their love, and, DIY is most popular! So, are you ready to make your style e-card? Here’s a tutorial about how to create a Valentine’s e-card with pictures and music.

Step 1: Find a program
Search flash slideshow software via Google and choose the one which meets your need most. Install the program and start up. The tool I use in this tutorial is Flash Slideshow Builder.


Step 2: Browse
In the "Browse" tab, select the folder where your pictures are in, then drag-n-drop to import the images.




Step 3: Edit
Swap to "Edit" tab and make some basic editing. For example, crop, bright & contrast etc. For creating a romantic e-card, I apply "Old Picture" effect to the selected image. No matter what effect you’ve selected, that’s real-time preview.




Step 4: Decoration
Decoration – the most important step to spicy up your slideshow.
Click the "add" button to input the sweet words for your honey and select desired text effects, font family / size / color / style. It’s selectable to set a delay of each text by clicking the "delay" button. Then click the "Preview" button to view the final result.



More free fonts can be download from http://www.highfonts.com/


Step 5: Effect
Swap to "Effect" tab to apply picture effect, which includes transition effects and photo motions (pan & zoom effect). Drag and drop to apply to the transitions, and so as the Pan/Zoom effects. Once a photo motion is applied, you see a mark on that picture. Right-click the image, there are more options for setting.




Step 6: Flash template
All templates are divided to two parts – general templates and thumbnail gallery templates. Certainly, you could make your style one with the built-in Theme Designer. Suppose no theme is needed, simply un-tick the "Enable Theme".



For adding background music, click "add" button at the right and import music (mp3, wma, wav format) from your pc. Then click "Edit Audio" to trim the audio.




Step 7: Setting and Publish
Click "Settings" to make your slideshow more professional. For example, control bar (the Heart style would be best for a Valentine’s Day e-card), preloader, water mark, etc. And it’s finally the last step, that’s to publish. Of course, "Publish as EXE" or "Publish as SWF" is best choice at this moment.




Tips:

• Besides text caption, funny sound clips and records can be added to single slide, too.


• The delay of decorations, transition duration and photo duration could be set to 0.1 second.


• For sharing you flash on blog or MySpace, please visit a tutorial here.


• For sharing it on YouTube, you have to publish it as SWF file and convert it to AVI with Flash to Video Converter.


• For delivery via CD, please publish as EXE file and burn with Nero.

See my e-card? Please visit http://flashslideshow.blogspot.com/2007/01/slideshow-for-valentines.html