Motivation: A new Slideshow Creation program from Microsoft
Features: Microsoft Photo Story 3

Microsoft's Photo Story 3 is a story in itself as much for how and why it is being marketed as for what it can do for the growing number of digital camera and camera enabled mobile phone users. Photo Story 3 makes fairly sophisticated photo slideshows doable by most PC users and the price is right - its free, sort of...

Photo Story 3, not to be confused with Magix Photo Story 2005 a very functionally competitive product, allows users to create slideshows from pictures in Windows XP (but only in valid, activated copies of XP). The approach is intuitive and wizard driven so first time users of PCs, digital cameras and photo processing on the PC are really catered to in this product. The screenshot at the left shows this approach. Users import pictures into the program, perform a whole range of simple to rich edits and then add the photo to an evolving slideshow timeline. Most of the operations are intuitive including drag and drop repositioning of images in the timeline.

For example, in the picture above Photo Story is smart enough to detect the black borders and asks if the user want to trim them away. At the bottom of the picture viewer are five icons for color correction, red eye removal, rotate the picture left, rotate the picture right and a more complete photo editor. That editor enables the user to do the following edit operations:
black and white, sepia, charcoal effects, watercolor style, diffused glow, negative, color sketch - this is a smattering of the dozens of effects available in photo editing programs like Adobe Photoshop Elements, Corel Paint Shop Pro, and Ulead's Photo Impact - but still impressive.

The next phase of Photo Story telling has users add texts and captions by clicking the next button at the bottom left of the screen. The timeline of photo at the bottom remains but the photo viewer now becomes a title and captions editor. Click on Next takes the user to the narration and transition stage of creating a photo story. Yes, users can add narration to each photo or the transitions between photos. Users familiar with Jasc Animation Workshop will be familiar with the transitions like wipes, fade ins, twists - more than a dozen ways to move from one photo to another with music and narration added as desired. Dead simple to do.

Now that the slideshow is done, Photo Story output becomes somewhat of a sticky wicket. Photo Story output only runs in XP or a PC with Media Center, Media Center Extender capabilities (in the latter case that allows showing on a Media Center TV). There are more size for the photo story from 1024 x 768 (for computers) down to 160 x 120 (for smartphones) with Pocket PCs served along the way. But the CD and DVD creation capabilities have been stripped out and will cost from $30-70 depending on whose version and what bells and whistles you want to have.

So the bottom line, is that Photo Story 3 is easy to use, adds some nice professional touches with music and narration and some neat transitions. Its easy to use and free - as long as you buy into the Microsoft and Windows only output options and XP only limitations. There are a couple of extra gotchas. First, if you don't have Windows XP forget Photo Story. Even if you do, make sure its a valid (not pirated copy) and XP has been properly activated. Microsoft is giving away Photo Story 3 in a deliberate drive, code named Windows Genuine Advantage, to get copies of XP properly activated and any pirated copies detected. Also the system requirements for Photo Story tend to the hefty side - 1.7GHz CPU or better, 400MB of disk space, 512MB or better of memory. So if you have the latest Microsoft XP and/or Media Center enabled Pocket PCs, Smartphone or TV, Photo Story is okay as a freebie. However, if you a PC 2 years old or more or want to send photo stories to Windows 2000, ME, 98, 95, NT, Mac or Linux users - then you may want to consider the very robust programs noted below whose price covers the cost of upgrading Photo Story 3 to CD/DVD output capability and then each adds

Given all the gotchas at the end it is worthwhile considering other competitive programs:
Anix Software MySlideShow - $29.99US, free trial - Explorer-like creation of slideshow with one track background music, simple edits. Output to .EXE, Web, Screen Saver, CD or DVD.
Magix PhotoStory 2005 -$39.99US - offers a simpler slide show creation with more corrections and effects. Supports more audio and video plus autoplay output to DVD or CD.
Photodex ProShow Gold 2 -$69.99, free trial - creates slideshows with audio, text, video and 300 effects; browse to photos and make edits then output to autoplay .EXE or Web or CD/DVD.
Ulead PictureShow - $49.99US, free trial- offers similar slide show creations plus allows for video, menus, and all caption slides along with very robust photo album, autoplay CD/ DVD. Verticalmoon SWFn'Slide with Text - $75US - creates slideshows in Flash with audio, text, and outstanding transition effects. Output to EXE, Web, and Windows screen saver.
ULead is our personal favorite here because there are many upgrade and other processing paths available.

Photo Story 3 is not an atypical Microsoft foray into the world of graphics - it starts out brilliantly, then leaves users with not a few gotchas and because its real purpose is rooted elsewhere (help reduce Windows piracy) - it leaves users looking for other and better places to go/grow. But with the new graphics push in Vista Redmond may be changing its graphics gameplan drastically - stay tuned.