The
first thing to do when beginning any project is to gather the
materials that you will need. The first step in Photostory is
to import into the project the images that you will be using.
Photostory allows import of most common image formats, including
.bmp, .dib, .eps, .gif, .jhif, ljpe, .jpeg, .jpg, .pcd, .pcx,
.png, .psd, .rle, .tga, and .tif. You can import a maximum of
300 images per project.
Once
you click the Import Pictures button, you will
be presented with a dialogue box where you can select the images
you want to use. Navigate to the folder suffrageimages:
You
can select one photo at a time by clicking on the photo to select
it, then clicking OK. This is a rather time consuming way to
import pictures. Let's do it in a batch: click on the first
picture (abigailadams.jpg) to select it. Then, scroll down to
the last picture (ulyssesgrant.jpg), HOLD DOWN THE SHIFT
KEY and click on the photo of Ulysses S. Grant. This
will select ALL the pictures in the folder. Now click "OK"
and all the pictures will be imported into your project. If
you wanted to import some photos, but not all, you would click
on the first photo, then hold down the CTRL key and select only
those photos you want by clicking once on them, then click "OK."
Arranging
Your Photos
You
are now ready to arrange your pictures. But wait -- what's Grant
doing in here with all our ladies? Let's get rid of him - select
his picture (if it is not already selected) by clicking once
on it. Once selected, it will have a blue border around it,
as you see in the example above. Now hit the DELETE key. Grant
is history (literally).
Notice
that the pictures were imported in alphabetical order according
to filename (abigailadams.jpg is first and stantonandanthony.jpg
is last). This is not the order we want. To move a picture,
select its thumbnail in the timeline and drag it to the position
you want. If you only want to move it over one spot, you can
also use the arrow keys to the right of the timeline. Repeat
this process until the pictures are in the following order:
-
Suffrage
parade
-
Abigail
Adams (lace bonnet, ruffle at the neck)
-
Lucy
Stone (dark hair parted in the middle; wart above lip)
-
Lucretia
Mott (old biddy seated in chair; lace cap tied under chin)
-
Elizabeth
Cady Stanton (shown with baby)
-
Soujourner
Truth (Black woman with glasses)
-
Text
of "Ain't I A Woman" Speech (text)
-
Stanton
and Anthony together (two women together)
-
Hillary
Clinton (color picture)
Tips:
Choosing
the right image format can make a big difference in the final
story. The key here is the resolution of the image. The higher
the resolution, the better the final product (but also, the
larger the file size). The trick is to find a balance between
high resolution and reasonable file size. In particular, be
careful with scanned images -- if they are scanned at too low
a resolution, they will "pixelate" when zoomed in
on. I'll show you an example of this in a minute.
Rather
than clicking Import
Pictures, you can open the folder where your pictures
are located, click the pictures you want to import, then drag
them to the Import and arrange your pictures
page. (Exception: you can't do this with the following extensions:
.tga, .psdk, .eps, .pcd, and .pcx. You must click the Import
Pictures button to import these files.)
In
the next step, we will begin to edit our pictures. But before
we go on, let's SAVE our project. Click the
SAVE button, name the file remember,
be sure to save it in your personal folder, then click "OK."
Warning: By default, Photostory automatically saves projects
into the "My Videos" folder. Be sure to change to
your personal folder when saving EVERYTHING.
