Monday, May 28, 2007

Children’s Day Gift for your beloved kids in the special day

Children’s Day is that special day annually that set aside your business or tons of work to share the funny time with your kids. The day is coming. Have you thought up a good idea or prepared a gift for the little ones who spread fun and laughter in our lives? Probably you could make a playful permanent DVD slideshow with them, for them? Just share the moment to work with your kids.

Take out the precious photo & videos of little kids, which memorize the funny time with them. Let them know how happy with them, how cute they are, how much he or she means to you, how enjoyable to grow up with them. Maybe they can’t understand right now. But one day, they will appreciate what you’ve done for them.

It is much easier to complete your work with DVD slideshow software, such as DVD Slideshow Builder., -- the top 1 photo to DVD software on Google. You can fulfill it all-in-one, with attractive transition effect, playful art clips, sentient theme music and then burn with built-in application. Though it is not free, I am sure you will find it worthies what you’ve paid.If you want to do basic decoration, alternatively, Picasa is recommended. There are the links to the software in the article and popular slideshow softwares.

Microsoft Photo Story 3 http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx
Picasa http://picasa.google.com
Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder http://www.photo-to-dvd.com/dvd-slideshow-builder.html
iPhoto http://www.apple.com/iphoto/

Monday, May 21, 2007

How to personalize your eye-catching slideshow?

You need not pay excessively for a professional slide show creating company to create your unique video slideshow. With the steps below, it is easy to customize the slideshow in your own style with more fun.

  • Decide the theme of your slideshow
    Keep your audience in mind and figure out what pleases them..
  • Pick up the photos
    It is very crucial and also very challenging to choose the appropriate photos & videos to light up your theme. Sometimes it is more helpful to let your friend choose photos for you, or, ask a slideshow consultant for advice, which would be more objective.
    In addition, you should make sure your photo is clear enough to play in fullscreen. The blurring and haziness will be enhanced the more enlarged the photo is. The qualified photo should not be too dark not too grainy yet.
  • Organize and edit your photos & videos
    Multiple transition effect, such as fade-in, fade-out, Ken burn’s effect with the pan and zoom can make your slideshow vivid and impressive.
    Add the text captions for your slideshow.

  • Add background music or narration carefully
    In order to touch up your slideshow, you’d better choose the proper music according to the feeling you want to give your audience. Happy, sentimental, funny, nostalgic…choose right one to make your slideshow moving. Or, wrong music would break your slideshow. Furthermore, check the length of music to match your photos.

  • Preview and DVD authoring
    Before sharing with your friends or authoring a DVD, you need to view and check your slideshows over again to insure it is perfect.

  • Slideshow software
    These are all the steps you need to do and prepare. Finally, you need to a professional SlideShow tool to fulfill it, say Wondershare DVD SlideShow Builder. Or, if you only want to do some basic edit to your photos, you can get the free software Google Picasa.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

What's the Ken Burns Effect for slideshow?

Ken Burns Effect is a cinematographic technique that many film makers use to add documentary-style touches to their works. It involves zooming and panning motions over still images, adding dynamic impact to an otherwise static presentation. It is simplistic, yet the results are elegant, making it very appropriate in picture slideshow presentations.

Some applications features this effect. And you can apply them to personalize your own slideshow, say Wondershare DVD SlideShow Builder.

You can download it free here
http://www.ourpix.com/dvd-slide-show.html

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Slideshow On Journey

If you love traveling, it’s really perfect to go around in this early summer – neither too wet nor too dry. Invite some good friends or family members, bring the DC or DV together, and let’s go!

Yep, lots of friends love to take photos along the journey, and make a slideshow when they are back. Perhaps you’ve found that your journey was so excellent, yet the slideshow was too boring to attract your audience. If give a “YES” answer to this, you won’t suffer it again. Read on please!

After making some slideshows for my family and friends, I arrived at some basic guidelines for building a traveling slideshow.

Who are your audiences?
What does it make for? It’s the crucial decision before you start the slideshow. You should know different people focus on different things. For instance, family would enjoy the moment they stay together, while friends want to learn more about where you’ve been to, and how beautiful it is. So do remember to always keep your audiences in mind, pick the right photos, right soundtrack and write the right captions.

What’s your story?
Suppose you’ve got the right photos, but just simply mix them together. I am sorry to tell, it’s a boring slideshow again, since others do not know what you would like to show!
Think about it – do you like to see a slideshow, which is only a combination of photos?
You must act as a director to direct a movie about traveling. And purpose of this movie is to make your audience experience the same emotion during your journey.

How to make it attractive?
  • Transition effects and photo motions
    I don’t like the slideshow with fade in and out effects from the beginning to the end, neither too many photo motions. What effects are invoked is according to the style of photos. For example, slow motion is relaxing, while quick rotation is more exciting. For emphasizing some certain photos, you could apply some pan & zoom effects as well. Effects and motions are the ways to express your feeling.


  • Right music for the slideshow
    It sounds like an easy job, in fact, it isn’t. You can easily pick pieces of good music from your favorite, but perhaps not the right one. Background music is most important part except for the photos - No wonder so many people ask for suggestion about background music for slideshow.
    Simply speaking, it is the same with picking the transition, which is depends on the style of the show. Style is the point to pick light music or rock & roll.


  • Scenery, together with people
    Unless you want to make a scenery presentation or personal portray, otherwise, please mix them together. Most audience would like to see that it’s YOU who have been to that place.
    People combine with beautiful scenery is most popular. We could learn a unique you with excellent landscape. Also your feelings – exciting or surprised at the special moment.


  • Never keep it too long
    Do not let your audience to feel sleepy to watch a long movie about your journey – they won’t be interested in each photo you’ve snapped. So just leave the most dazzling photos in your slideshow, and make them want to know more next time and keep watching again and again.


What software for creating a slideshow?
Surely, Adobe is the best for experts or making personalization slideshow. If you don’t have any flash skills, slideshow software, such as Wondershare Flash Slideshow Suite will help a lot, while slide.com is good for creating free simple online album.


When you consider everything mentioned above, your audience will absolutely applaud on it and look forward to your next trip.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Flash Slideshow Image Gallery

This tutorial will show you how to make a simple, yet effective, slideshow-type image gallery using Flash with minimal scripting.If you want a program to make slideshow without any coding knowledge required, check the Flash Slideshow Maker

Written by Justin Finley, from http://www.layersmagazine.com/flash-slideshow-image-gallery.html

This is great for displaying your portfolio online, sharing personal photos, or for anywhere else you may need an image gallery or slideshow. What is important for you to take away from this tutorial is the theory and script behind making this slideshow work so you can apply it in your own situations. My example will be a pretty simple layout but the techniques can be applied to something much more involved.


STEP 1: Prepare Flash Document
As usual, the first thing to do is set up the .FLA document. My settings for this one are 530 x 540 at 30 frames per second. It's not very important that you adhear to these settings as they should reflect your specific needs.




STEP 2: Create Background.
Rename layer 1 to "background". In the first frame of this background layer create a background or "container" for the slideshow. You can either make something in Flash or import a background if you already have one made in Photoshop. After you are done creating your background or "container", lock the layer so you can't select it by accident.




STEP 3: Import Assets
Assuming you have already prepared all of your images that are to be in this gallery, it is time to import them. Go to File > Import to Library, find the files you will be using in this project (images and graphical assets alike) and click Open. The assets you selected should now appear in your Library window (PC: Ctl+L, Apple: Command+L).


STEP 4: Laying Out Gallery
Create a new layer and name it "content". This will hold our images. Drag the first image you want displayed in your gallery to the stage and position it. Select it, hit F8 to Convert to Symbol, name it "mc_content", hit OK. In the Properties Inspector window give it the instance name "mc_content" as well.



Double-click your new mc_content movie clip to enter editing mode. Rename layer 1, the layer currently holding your image, to "images". This will hold all your images that are to be displayed in the slideshow. Also, I'm going to add a small content area to explain the images. Create a new layer, name it "textbg". In the first frame of this new layer, I am going to drag out a pre-made text background from my library. I tend to separate my elements as much as possible before bringing them into Flash which allows me the flexibility to animate each element separately if I want to.



Now, create a layer, name it "text". This will hold our descriptions of each image. On the first frame of this new layer, take the Text tool and type out a description of your image and any other information you want displayed with that image.



STEP 5: Adding Content
Now we will put the rest of our images and descriptions in place. Since we have the layout set up, all we are going to do is swap images and text in each frame. To save some time, instead of doing each new image from scratch, I am going to select all 3 frames on all 3 layers by shift-clicking. Then I will hold ALT and click-and-drag copies of the keyframes on to frame 2. Now you should have the same 3 keyframes in frame 1 and 2.



Now, on frame 2 select your image that is displayed (currently the same image as in frame 1), right-click on it and go down to "Swap Bitmap.." (or in Properties Inspector click the "Swap.." button). A dialog will open allowing you to select an image to swap out the current one with. This allows you to keep the exact same positioning (granted your images are the same size) and easily swap out each image with just a few clicks. Select the image you want to be next in your portfolio and hit OK. You should see that your image has swapped. Now select the text on this 2nd keyframe and change it to match your new image. That's all you have to do for each new image. Duplicate the 3 previous frames, swap the image for the next one in line, replace the text to match and that's it. Do this until you have all the images with their descriptions in place.

Finally, create a new layer, name it "actions", select the first frame, and hit F9 to open the scripting window. Add a stop(); to the window (Shortcut: Escape key then S then T).




STEP 6: Add Controls
Go back to the root timeline by clicking the back arrow located up where the file name is displayed. Create a new layer on the root timeline, name it "controls". In frame 1 on the controls layer, drag out pre-made Next and Back buttons from your library that you have made in Photoshop, or create them from scratch using the drawing tools inside of Flash.



Position them and then select the button that will act as your Back button. Hit F8 to Convert to Symbol, select button, then name it "last_btn". Also, give it an instance name of "last_btn" in the Properties Inspector window.


Double-click the new button to enter editing mode. If you would like, you can give it a simple rollover effect like you would any button. This is also the place where you would add sound effects for rollover or click, however both are optional. What is most important is to give it a decent sized hit area. Do this by dragging a duplicate of the key frame in the UP position to the HIT position by Alt + clicking-and-dragging. Now, with the Hit key frame selected, draw a hit area over the arrow with the rectangle drawing tool.



Follow the same process for the next button. Name the movie clip "next_btn" and give it an instance name of the same in the Properties Inspector window.


STEP 7: Scripting
Now it's time to add the script that will make this slideshow work. On the root timeline create a new layer, name it "actions". Select the first keyframe of this layer and hit F9 to open the scripting window. Insert this code:







The script is saying that when the Next button is pressed, if the current frame that the play head is on equals the total number of frames present in mc_content, then return the play head to frame 1 of mc_content. This will make it appear to loop. Else, if the play head is not on the total number of frames, then it will go on to the next. The Last button is essentially the same, but in reverse. It says if the current frame is frame 1 then go back to the last frame. If it's not (else) on frame 1, go back 1 frame.

STEP 8: Finishing Touches
One thing you will definitely need is the ability to launch a bigger version of your image or a link to a website if it's a gallery of web work. Double-click your content_mc movie clip to enter editing mode. I'm going to create a new layer underneath the Actions layer and name it "launch". I am going to use the Text tool to create what will be a button for launching a higher res image. When finished with the type, select it, hit F8 to Convert to Symbol, select button, name it launch_btn and give it an instance name of the same in the Properties Inspector window. As with the arrows, you can give this button a simple rollover, sounds, and most importantly, a hit area if you wish.




Go to your Actions layer and insert this code underneath the stop that that is already there:





The path should be to where your larger version of the image lives on the internet. You can repeat this process for each image that needs to be able to launch in a new window.

That should do it. Now export your movie and check it out. The Next and Back buttons should scroll through the images seemlessly and your Launch button should launch your higher res version in a new browser window, depending of course, on the fact that you put the correct path in the getURL function.

Friday, May 11, 2007

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Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Making slideshows in iPhoto

We've been able to make pretty decent slideshows on a computer for a very long time. It's nothing new. But a few years ago Apple kicked it up a notch with iPhoto. I do not mean to be a commercial for Apple, but this little piece of simple software is amazing to me, if for no other reason than its slideshow feature, a feature that Apple does not even really promote. As easy as it is to use (which allows you to focus on the content and your story rather than mucking around trying to make it work), I do not know why more people, including students, do not make more and better us of the tool. It is not a pro-level tool, yet for slideshows, many pros use it.


iPhoto is not deep with a laundry-list of features, yet it has what you need to tell a digital story with images and do it well. Still, one needs the talent and skill, not in using the tool (that's easy), but in knowing how to present the relevant information best, and how to tell a "digital story." People like Dana Atchley (1941-2000) were pioneers in digital story telling. We need more Dana Atchleys today. The tools are there, what we need now is more design education, more understanding about how to present information, and how to tell compelling, relevant stories that matter. Short, relevant, and good slideshows embedded in the presentation can be used by serious scientists or artsy-fartsy grad students working on their MFA.



Article from http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2006/08/the_slideshow.html