Photo Story 3

I love technology!  One of my favorites is digital photography.  Remember the days when your camera took 24 or 36 exposures and then you had to take the film in for processing.  When you got the pictures back there were usually 8 or 10 of them that were really good and the rest were marginal or worse.  I resisted the move to digital photography mostly because of the up front cost of the camera. I reasoned that for the cost of the average “quality” digital camera I could process hundreds of rolls of traditional 35mm film.  Eventually peer pressure and curiosity got the better of me and I purchased the Cannon S2IS. It only took one day and my old 35mm camera was shelved forever.  There is nothing like the immediate feedback you receive from your camera after taking a shot.  If its good you know it right away.  If its bad you drop it and make the appropriate corrections and shoot away.  Love it!  So once you have shot your first thousand pictures and you have 50 you just love you run in to the problem of displaying digital images.  You can always print them, but it just lacks something to hand your friends digital images that have been printed.  So what's a budding digital photographer to do.  I started with Microsoft power point and used the idea of slide shows with my digital photos.  It worked but it was not without its problems.  The setup was significant in its time consumption.  Layout, design, timing, and custom animations.  Then i stumbled on to something while i was trying to down load a director plug in for Power point.  There is a program that is a free down load on the Microsoft downloads web site called Photostory 3.  It had the magic price tag (Free) so i downloaded and installed it.  I tried it once and just about fell out of my chair.  This product takes the process of digital image display to a whole new level.  You can add zooms and pans, focal points, music and timings..  It went way beyond my expectations of a free product.  So i thought i would blog it so all of you can go and get your free download.  Certainly something this good cannot stay free forever.  Watch for the upcoming screen cast on Photostory 3.