Photostory

Rock Photostory


Project Description: "Create/import/capture/scan a minimum of 20 photo images and then modify some of these images with Picnik and/or Splashup online.Using Photo Story 3, create a photo slideshow containing these photo images with captions and titles, narration, motion animation and transition effects, and music."

Overview: Photostory was a lot of fun and a good (easy) way to start this class. What I like about this software is that it is free and available online so that you can access it from any computer. I used Picnik to manipulate my photographs and I found that process to be kind of addictive. Picnik is free too and it has tons of features to edit digital images. I will most likely buy the upgraded edition for use in the technology class that I teach. I do not think that Photostory will be as useful to me as an instructional tool, but my students love to re-visit the work that they have done, so I think that they will really enjoy seeing a progression of their work through Photostory. I will also introduce my students to Picnik, because it is an easy and effective way to teach them how malleable digital images are. Also, my niece, who is the same age as my students, has begun to work with a modeling agency. I think she will be interested to see how touch-ups can be applied to digital photography and Picnik has touch-up features including teeth whitening, slimming, even changing hair color.

Among the digital editing features that I liked the most in Picnik were “night vision” and all of the different font effects you could add to your pictures. This allowed me to get really creative with my project, which in turn, made it a lot of fun. In the project I did for this class, I used some photographs of my Chihuahua, Rock. Rock has amber colored eyes that have been hard to delete the “red-eye” effect in iPhoto on Mac Book. It was easier to erase red-eye in Picnik, although I did not always choose the “animal” selection that they offer when eliminating red-eye.

Photostory was very easy to upload and arrange images in. I can see myself using this often in class to make documentaries of the projects we create. I did not have an opportunity to work with the narration in Photostory because I had not yet sorted out my microphone hardware on my laptop, but adding in musical soundtrack was very easy. Rock is the “baby” of our family, and my mother-in-law and other extended family members have loved watching the photostory over and over again.