How would you like to be able to create electronic presentations like these—that
you can send to friends and family to show off photos of your loved ones, or
even create your own screen savers?
You'd love to, but you don't have the time or money to invest in a program
that would allow you to create moving presentations as beautiful as these, right?
Wrong!
Last
month I showed you how, for under $20, you can get Microsoft's Media Plus
package, which includes Photo Story, to create cool presentations in a few seconds.
Now I'll show you another program that I've discovered that just blew me
away! 3D
Album.
You can purchase it for about $30! It takes only minutes to create incredible
presentations and you don't need a computer science degree. In fact, if you
can point and click a couple times...you're done! Unbelievable!
After returning from the Microsoft
MVP Summit in February, I was searching the web for a photo album software
program, when I discovered 3D
Album. It seemed too good to be true. I had to have it! When it arrived
a couple days later, I had it installed and created my first presentation in
about 10 minutes! A fully animated presentation that not only moved around to
the music as photos dropped into place, but had some of my favorite songs included
(I created two versions, mellow and rock). With a click here, I created a web
presentation, another click and I had one to email and another click and the
same presentation was now my default screen saver. Too cool!
If you'd like to see my first MVP Summit presentation, you can go here to view
the details and download a copy to view: http://www.mousetrax.com/dian/summitexhibit.html
3D
Album is very simple to use. Just open the program, point to your
photos, choose a presentation style and click build! Done!
There are tons of options that allow you to customize your presentation.
Even better, it's very easy to find these options. When you select
one of the over 70 presentation styles, you'll easily see any optional settings,
for that style, at the bottom of the dialog box while you're assembling your
presentation. Just click to see any available options. Most allow you so many
style options that you can completely change the feel of the presentation.
They even have optional skins that you can apply to the program software
interface itself! If you don't like the blues and greens (see previous image),
you can change the look to something a little more sophisticated (see below
image).
You just need to assemble the photos you want to use into a folder and point
to that folder. Some photos may need a little adjustment, if they are sized
very different than the majority of photos you have, so they all come out in
the same sized view and you don't end up chopping off a few heads. But you can
easily set your default photo editing program to link up with this software.
Then you can have a blast (and spend hours<grin>) viewing all the different
styles from which to choose. Just click down the list and your photos will instantly
be shown in the new presentation styles.
From an exhibit hall...
...or a spinning exhibit....
...or sheets blowing in the wind on a clothes line as they float by...
...or Valentine's candy boxes that spin around and open to reveal the new photo...
...or a casual walk through an art gallery?
And if you don't feel that you have enough styles to choose from, you can click
a More Styles button at the bottom of the list to jump to their web site
where you can download all the newly added additional designs...free! After
you download the new styles, a quick double click and they're installed and
ready to use from your newly expanded presentation style list.
And yes, the Help files actually provide great information, if you want to
dig into all the possibilities a little further.
When it comes time to click the Build button, it takes only a second
or two to put your presentation together. And you have lots of options for how
you'd like to compile the finished file. From an EXE, or screen saver, compressed
for email, zipped or web page. You can even chain up the presentations
to create an ongoing run of several presentations. The photo limit—is unlimited.
You can compile as many photos as your computer can handle.
Granted, the finished version is a bit larger than the Microsoft Media presentations
that you can build, just as easily, with Photo
Story. The Photo Story presentations I created average around 1meg, whereas
most of these average more like 7meg. So if you just want a nice way to present
your photos, Photo Story can easily do it and the files are much smaller for
sharing. But if you have the bandwidth or CDs to burn and you'd like to blow
folks away, this is a fantastic alternative. I love and use both programs!
Unfortunately, they don't have a download site to purchase the software online.
But you can order it from Amazon at this link 3D-Album.
That's where I got it—and I had it in a couple days.
I don't know how they managed to pile this much cool into this little,
inexpensive program...but I'm so glad they did!
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