Microsoft Photo Story 3
Before we go step by step through Photo Story, we’re going to list the top 7 issues/questions students
typically have when working with Photo Story. This will give you a good idea of what to watch out for
as your produce your project.
1. Storyboard
It’s a really good idea to storyboard your project before you start with the technology piece. Figure
out the order you want your images and text slides to be in, choose where the music is going to be
placed, and write out your narration for each slide (if you’re narrating). A blank storyboard
document is available if you’d like to use it.
2. Assemble All Media Files
It’s not a requirement, but it will be much easier if you assemble all your media files before you
start. This includes images, slides with text, music files, and a “storyboard” of your production
(including written text for any narration you are going to provide). Put them all in the same folder.
3. Images
• Landscape (horizontal images) will look better, but you can also use portrait (vertical) – it
will just fill in with black.
• If possible, you’d like your images to be at least 640 by 480, otherwise it will “blow up” your
image and it won’t look as nice.
• Your images can be jpeg, png, or gif. You must save the original image files – you cannot
copy and paste into Word – Photo Story will not be able to use the files from within Word.
4. Slides with Text
Photo Story can only create titles on top of existing images. If you want slides with just text (over a
blank background), you’ll need to create them in another application. You can use high end
applications like Photoshop, but you can also do it quickly and easily in PowerPoint.
• Open PowerPoint.
• Create as many slides with text as you want, including setting the background color. Make
the text pretty large to look good in Photo Story.
• Choose File, then Save As. At the bottom of the save dialog box is a choice that says Save As
Type – choose gif, jpeg or png (probably for text gif will be fine, but if you have a
complicated background, choose png).
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Navigate to where you want to save the files and click Save.
It will ask if you want to save every slide or just the current slide. If you have more than one
slide, choose every slide. It will create a folder and save each of your slides.
5. Music Files
Photo Story will not import music directly from CD’s, you have to import the music in first using
something like iTunes or Windows Media Player. Photo Story will recognize mp3, wav, and wma
files. Here’s an example using iTunes.
• Open iTunes.
• Choose Edit, then Preferences, then click on the Advanced tab, then Importing Tab. Change
Import Using to MP3 Encoder (Photo Story won’t recognize AAC). Click OK.
• Put in your CD and view the songs in iTunes.
• Select the song you want, right-click on it, and choose Convert Selection to MP3. (If you
already have a song imported into iTunes in something other than MP3, right-click on it and
choose Convert to MP3).
• Once it converts it, switch from the CD to your Library, right-click on the imported song and
choose Show Song File.
• Either note where the file is (so you can navigate to it from within Photo Story), or copy and
paste it somewhere where you’ll know where to find it.
6. Saving
You will want to save your project in two different ways. You will need to save it as a Photo Story
project (so that you can go in and edit it again), and as a Windows Media file (to present the final
product to others). See step #17 below.
7. I Don’t Have Photo Story
If you don’t have Photo Story, but you do have Windows XP, you can download and install it for
free (or take it home from the Student Server on your flash drive). If you have a Macintosh, you
can’t run Photo Story, but you can do similar things in iPhoto or iMovie.
Now we’ll start using Photo Story 3.
8. Open Photo Story & “Begin a new story” Click on “Begin a new story” and click “Next >”
9. Import pictures. Based on your storyboard, import all the pictures you plan to use in your story.
Click on “Import Pictures…”
10. Then select what pictures you want to import and click “OK”. Use ctrl-click to select multiple
pictures. Please note that you can import pictures multiple times if you need to (if they’re in different
folders, or if you want to go back later and get more pictures).
11. Once you import your pictures, you can see them on the timeline. You can use the arrows or click
and drag a picture to move it in the timeline
.
12. If you have any pictures that aren’t standard dimensions, Photo Story will bring them in with black
borders around them. Click Remove black borders if you want Photo Story to try to remove them
automatically. You can choose to accept all the changes (i.e., removing of black borders) by clicking
on “Yes to All” or go picture by picture and choose to either accept (by clicking “Yes”), not accept
(by clicking “No”), or adjust the proposed changes (you would adjust by clicking and dragging the
square boxes). It is recommended to view picture by picture because Photo Story will incorrectly
edit some pictures.
13. To edit your images individually, click on the image in the story line and click edit (or any of the
other editing tools) – you can also right-click on an image and choose Edit.. Click “Close” when you
are done editing an image, then “Next” when you are done editing all images to move to the next
screen.
14. If you want to add effects, click on the effect from the drop down menu. Or if you would like to add
a title to your pictures, click on a picture, and then type the text in the text box and click next.
(Remember that you’ll need to create slides with text only on them in another program – like
PowerPoint – as described in step 4 above.
15. You are now prompted to “Narrate” and “Customize motion”. Here is where you will record your
narrative (according to your storyboard). You can also preview your story on this page. When
previewing your story, if you don’t like the default motion assigned to each image by Photo Story,
you can customize the motion by clicking on “Customize Motion”
We will focus on narrating the slides first. Plug in your microphone. Then click on the slide you
want to narrate. If you like, you can type in your story for each slide to help guide you as your record
the story for each slide. To begin recording, click the button with the red circle. To stop recording,
click the button with the black square.
16. The steps in step #15 need to be repeated for each slide that requires narration. You can preview the
narration after you record it by clicking on “Preview…”
17. To adjust the default motion for any or all slides, click on “Customize Motion.” By default, Photo
Story adds motion to every image except the first one. To adjust the motion, make sure the “Motion
and Duration” tab is selected. Then decide whether you want to adjust the start or the ending
position. You can click on the square boxes and drag to the desired position as well as resize the
boxes. You can also adjust the duration of the motion. If you want no motion at all, select “Set end
position to be the same as start position” and then make sure the motion boxes are both
encompassing the entire image. You can use the arrows to move to the next slide and adjust its
motion if you want.
18. To adjust the transition, click on the transition tab. Then select on the transition you want and adjust
the timing. Click “Preview…” to preview the transition. Click “Save” and close when you are done.
In general, “simple” transitions like Cross Fade work better in your presentation than the “fancy”
ones.
16. Once you’re finished with narration, motion and transitions, click “Next>” to get to Music screen.
Select your music by clicking “Select Music…” and navigating to the music you want as your
soundtrack. Remember, Photo Story cannot import music directly from CD’s – they must already be
in mp3, wav, or wma formats (see step # 5 above). Or, you can create more “generic” music using
the Create Music button. Music that you bring in either way will start at the currently selected slide
and play until the music runs out, or the presentation ends, or until it gets to a slide where another
piece of music has been brought it. You can bring in as many pieces of music as you have slides. If
you want a more “sophisticated” soundtrack, use something like Audacity to mix your music first,
then export the soundtrack as an mp3 file and bring into Photo Story. Preview if necessary by
clicking “Preview…”. Then adjust the volume and click “Next>”
17. It’s important to save your story in two ways. First, you need to save your Photo Story project so
that you can go back and edit it in Photo Story if you wish. Click Save Project, navigate to where
you want to save it (click on the Browse button, navigate to where you want to save it, and give it a
name), and click Save. In the future, you can re-open this file and edit your project.
18. Next you need to save your story for playback on your computer. Choose the location and file name
that you want to save this as (you can change the default name and location by clicking Browse).
You can adjust the settings if you want (in most cases we will not), then Click “Next >” when you
are done. Photo Story will now export your movie as a Windows Media file.
19. Once it’s finished, you can view it or simply exit Photo Story.
20. When you want to show this presentation, it’s the Windows Media player version that you open (not
the Photo Story project file). In the example above, that file is named PhotoStory1.wmv (the Photo
Story project file will have a .wp3 file extension on it).