Creating a Story With Photo Story 3


Creating a Story With Photo Story 3

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All digital stories are only as good as the story they tell. To begin a digital story you must start by going through the writing and editing process so you have a good story to tell. Then collect the images for your story and save them in one folder on your computer. You can use a digital camera to take pictures, search the Internet, use MS Paint or other drawing software to create pictures or use a scanner to turn any photograph or drawing on paper into a digital format.

	Picture #1 Importing pictures to the film strip.
Once you have a good story to tell and the images, you are ready to begin creating your digital story with Photo Story 3. Open Photo Story 3 and select "begin a new story", this will put you on the "import and arrange your pictures" screen. Then click the "Import Pictures" button (see Picture #1) and in the file browser dialog box select the folder that you saved your images in. To import a picture click on it and then click OK. To insert all the images at once, hold control and click on all your images and then OK.

	Picture #2 Arranging and editing the pictures.
You will notice that you now have all your pictures on the "film strip" at the bottom of the screen. The picture that is selected and you are working with is outlined in blue in the film strip and appears in the "picture preview" area. You can move the order of the pictures by clicking on the left or right arrow located at the end of the film strip. You can also delete a picture by clicking on the X. (see picture #2) If any pictures imported were not in a 4 by 3 ratio then a black border is placed around the picture and the "remove black border" button appears. This button will crop the picture for you and remove the black border. After clicking on this button you can click yes if you like the way the picture is cropped or you can drag the handles and crop the picture yourself. Under the Picture Preview area you have several other picture editing options which include rotating, removing red eye and the edit button which allows you to crop and add several different effects to the pictures.

	Picture #3 Adding text to your pictures.
You can add text onto any of the pictures in your story on the "Add titles to your pictures" screen. Notice that above the text box are three buttons that allow you to align your text either right, center or left justified. There are also three buttons that allow you to select if the text will be positioned on the top, middle or bottom of the picture.(see picture #3) The "select font" button, allows you to select font style, size and color.

	Picture #4 Narrating your pictures.
Next is the "Narrate your pictures and customize motion" screen. With a microphone attached to your computer you can record yourself narrating your story. You can record narration for each picture by selecting it from the film strip and clicking on the red button. Clicking on the square stops the recording and the arrow dipping to the left will delete any recording on that picture. The "preview" button on the bottom will preview your story starting on the picture that you are currently working with.(see picture #4)

	Picture #5 Customizing the motion of your pictures.
Photo Story 3 will automatically set zooming and panning effects. In many cases you will want to customize this yourself by clicking on the "customize motion" button. Click to place a green check in the box next to "specify start and end position of motion." Then you can set the start and end position by dragging the handles on the corners or dragging the entire rectangle to a different location on your picture.(see picture #5) You may also set the type of transition you would like to use when the pictures change while the digital story plays. In order to change the transition you must click on the tab at the top of the customize motion screen called "Transition." The next screen allows you to insert music into your story. The music used can either be a music file from your computer or music that you create with Photo Story 3. I chose not to have my students use music but depending on the story being told it can be a very effect element of the digital story.

	Picture #6 Saving your story.
The last thing you need to do to finish your digital story is to save it. On the "Save your story" screen you can select where you want to play your story, the files name and the location where the file will be saved. If you click on the settings button you can set the size that the story will be displayed on the computer screen when played. Photo Story 3 creates two types of files. One is the project file, which can only be opened with Photo Story 3 and can be edited. The project file ends with the extension .wp3. The other file is a Windows Movie Video file and ends with the extension .wmv. This file is the compressed version of your digital story and opens using the Windows Media Player. This file can not be edited, it can only be viewed. This file is the one to use to share your digital stories with parents or other students. It can be burned to a CD, DVD or posted on the Internet.

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