Photo Story
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Microsoft Photo Story | |
|---|---|
 Microsoft Photo Story 3 in Windows XP |
|
| Developed by | Microsoft |
| Latest release | 3.1 / 2006 |
| OS | Microsoft Windows |
| Genre | Photo sharing |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | Microsoft Photo Story 3 for Windows: make show-n-tell cool again |
Microsoft Photo Story is a free application that allows users to create a show and tell presentation from their digital photos. [1] The software uses the Ken Burns Effect on digital photos and allows adding narration, effects, transitions and background music to create a Windows Media Video movie file with pan and zoom effects. Once a photo story has been made it can be played on Windows Media Player or burned to a DVD or CD. Version 2 was included in Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition and Microsoft Digital Image Suite versions 9 and 10. [1] It supported exporting the photo story as a Video CD. Version 3.0, although freely downloadable from Microsoft, removed Video CD burning and supported an add-on from Sonic Solutions for exporting and burning the photo story to DVD. Version 3.0 includes the ability to randomly generate background music which is composed on the fly from a combination of themes and also includes basic photo editing and touchup features.[2]
The latest version is Photo Story 3.1, included with Microsoft Digital Image 2006. It includes some additional transitions.
[edit] History
Photo Story originally was based on a Microsoft Research project in photo sharing. [3] The chief finding of that research was that people narrated better stories when they moved their hands, made gestures and pointed at their images. Early Photo Story prototype versions encouraged people to point at their images using the mouse, as the pointing would affect the algorithm that generated the pans and zooms.
The same research showed that users did not like the sound of their voice and tended to record their narration over and over again. [4] This made the narration less spontaneous and the resulting stories less interesting if people were unable to express themselves clearly. Therefore, the early prototype had only one button, called the "Oops!" button. The research showed that if there was an OOPS! button available to undo their actions, people would be assured by its presence but would not use it unless they truly made a mistake during narration.
