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Digital cameras, scanners, and photo scanning services are all great ways of preserving your memories on your computer. These days, most of us have folders, memory cards, discs, or hard drives full of digital photos - so many that we don't always get around to grouping them properly and sharing them with friends and family. Why bother snapping all those photos at birthdays, graduations, vacations, and holidays, if they just get lost on your computer, never to be seen again? One great way of sharing and showing off your digital photos is to make a video slideshow. These can be a great personalized gift to mark a special occasion, or just a fun way of sharing your photos with close friends and family members, who may have been present (and in the pictures!) or far away, unable to share in your experiences. You could even make a special slideshow, set to romantic music, as a personalized Valentines Day or anniversary gift for your loved one. After all, there is no better way to show your affection than to walk down memory lane together. Making a video slideshow is fun, and quite easy to do. You don't need to be a wiz with computers, or purchase expensive software to make a great video slideshow. Every current Windows-based PC has a built-in software application called Windows Movie Maker, which can be used to make a video slideshow. Unlike typical photo slideshows, which can only display photos stored on your computer, video slideshows made with Movie Maker can be easily burned to DVD, transferred to memory cards, or emailed to friends and family. Because these slideshow are converted into a standard video format, they can be viewed on any computer. Using Movie Maker's storyboard mode, you can quickly and easily import your photos, drop them onto the storyboard, and begin making a slideshow. Rearranging your photos within the slideshow is a piece of cake. In storyboard mode, each of your pictures shows up a small thumbnail; just click and drag the thumbnails into position to change the order in which your photos will appear in your slideshow. You can even rotate your photos (if you held your camera sideways for taller photo) and perform basic photo manipulation, such as lightening or darkening photos that are exposed improperly. Once all your photos are fixed up and in the right order, you can spice up your video slideshow with transitions and music. Transitions such as wipes and fades can look cheesy when used in movies (even the most die-hard Star Wars fans will attest to this). But in slideshows, these over-the-top transitions look great. For music, it is best to choose a song that fits with the theme of the slideshow. For example, if you're making a slideshow of Halloween photos, you might want to use a spooky song like "Monster Mash," or "Grim Grinning Ghosts" (better known as the theme song to Disneyland's Haunted Mansion ride). The last thing to consider is "picture duration," or the amount of time each picture will be displayed in the slideshow. The default setting in Movie Maker is 5 seconds; this means that each picture will be displayed for 5 seconds. Transitions can take as much as 2 seconds, meaning each photo will only really be displayed for 3 seconds. That might be plenty of time, especially if you plan on fitting in hundreds of photos. On the other hand, if you want to narrate your slideshow with stories about each photo, you may need more than a few seconds per picture. Fortunately, "trimming" photos - that is, changing their display duration, is also simple to do. Just go into timeline view, and change the length of each photo by grabbing its edges and dragging it to the desired length. Whether your digital camera is crammed full of recent photos, or you've finally decided to send that old shoebox full of family photos to a photo scanning service, you can use your digital photos to make something really special by creating a video slideshow.
Article Source: http://www.onlinearticlessite.com
Jeffery Holter is a professional freelance writer based out of Los Angeles, California. If you would like to know more about photo scanning , please visit ScanDigital.com
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