Photo Story
I'm not a photo nut or anything but I do like playing with my pics and its even better when it's free! If I have not proselytized you yet on Google's Picasa consider this a fair warning. There are so many photo editing programs out there and I've even got a bunch that came with my cameras. None though, free ones and many pay-for ones, compare to the simplicity and power of the all mighty Picasa for what 97% of people want to do with their photos.
Recently I wanted to make a photo CD/DVD for my grandmother. I first played with Nero and it's numerous options, but found it somewhat klunky in what I wanted to do even though it could do a lot of it rather easily. Then I knew Picasa had the "movie" option which makes a quick movie out of your pics. Good, but not enough customization or ability to add soundtracks. That's a big area of needed improvement for them I think but not sure how many people actually use it.
Finally, keeping again with the free theme, I downloaded a program I'd heard about a few months ago, Microsoft's Photo Story 3. It is similar to their program for video clips (Movie Maker 2.1, comes with most PC's, under Programs/Accessories) but mainly focused on pics. Very intuitive and easy to use with a lot of options. It's not perfect but it has options to save it for different viewing environments which is great, or you can buy a "burn to DVD" package if you so desire. Not wanting to pay I just loaded the resultant video masterpiece into Nero and created a DVD out of it. Good stuff and plenty fun to play with for short slideshows to put on DVD or send to the fam. (For files too large for email, send it to them via YouSendIt.com)
Recently I wanted to make a photo CD/DVD for my grandmother. I first played with Nero and it's numerous options, but found it somewhat klunky in what I wanted to do even though it could do a lot of it rather easily. Then I knew Picasa had the "movie" option which makes a quick movie out of your pics. Good, but not enough customization or ability to add soundtracks. That's a big area of needed improvement for them I think but not sure how many people actually use it.Finally, keeping again with the free theme, I downloaded a program I'd heard about a few months ago, Microsoft's Photo Story 3. It is similar to their program for video clips (Movie Maker 2.1, comes with most PC's, under Programs/Accessories) but mainly focused on pics. Very intuitive and easy to use with a lot of options. It's not perfect but it has options to save it for different viewing environments which is great, or you can buy a "burn to DVD" package if you so desire. Not wanting to pay I just loaded the resultant video masterpiece into Nero and created a DVD out of it. Good stuff and plenty fun to play with for short slideshows to put on DVD or send to the fam. (For files too large for email, send it to them via YouSendIt.com)
