Wondershare Photo Story Platinum
Reviewed: Geetesh Bajaj
October 29th 2008
February 25th 2009
Introduction
About Photo Story Platinum
Download and Installation
Using Photo Story Platinum
Pricing and Support
Conclusion
Introduction
For users with tons of pictures, it's always a challenge showing and sharing these pictures in ways that are different, yet easy to create. One great option is to create a slideshow from the pictures with a cool style and some music and titles -- and then burn them on a DVD, or save them in a format compatible with the iPod, Zune, etc.
Doing so however is not always easy -- and that's where Photo Story Platinum, the product I am reviewing now can help.
About Photo Story Platinum
Photo Story Platinum is from Wondershare, a company based in Guangdong, China that creates custom programs for the enterprise market. Ourpix is their foray into the photos and movies market. Learn more about their products and download a free trial version of Photo Story Platinum from their site...
Photo Story Platinum imports your pictures -- and then provides around 200+ built in movie styled effects to convert them to a slideshow. You can also add music, text titles and captions, and even animated clip arts. The output file formats are AVI, MPG, WMV, MP4, and 3GP video formats which can be easily shared on iPod, iPhone, Youtube, Zune, and more. The output slideshow movies can also be burned with or without 16:9 widescreen format attributes to DVDs that can be played without access to a computer.
My contact at Wondershare for this review was Jane - thank you, Jane.
Download and Installation
Download the installer, run the setup routine and follow the instructions. You'll end up with a Wondershare program group in your Windows Start menu (see Figure 1 below).
Figure 1: Wondershare Start menu Group
Using Photo Story Platinum
Follow this steps to get started with Photo Story Platinum:
- Go to your Windows Start menu and choose All Programs | Wondershare | Photo Story Platinum | Wondershare Photo Story Platinum (see Figure 1 above).
- This opens the Photo Story Platinum interface as shown in Figure 2. Notice the for tabs on the top:
Photo Set, Style, Decoration, Create
With the Photo Set tab active, browse to a folder on your system, as shown in Figure 2 below.
Figure 2: Photo Story Platinum Interface
- Choose the pictures you want to be added, and click on the Add Photo button (refer to Figure 2 above). Add pictures from more folders if required, and similarly add audio and change the background.
- Now click the Style tab -- here you can preview and apply readymade styles to the movie (see Figure 3). Double click to apply the style, a preview of the applied style can be seen in a window towards the right side.
Figure 3: Style Tab
- The next tab is Decoration, here you add stylized text, animated and still clip art, and effects, Once you choose any of the decorative items, select them, and drag-drop them to the timeline (see Figure 4).
Figure 4: Decoration tab
- The final tab is Create, as shown in Figure 5. You can preview the story one last time, before you are happy to go ahead and create a video or a DVD out of it.
Figure 5: Create tab
- Save the movie.
Pricing and Support
Photo Story Platinum costs $39.95 for a single user license, and is available as a multiple user license product as well.
Support is through email, online FAQ , phone, and user forum.
Conclusion
Photo Story Platinum does have a great price:performance ratio -- and even if you have a similar product, you do end up with 200 extra styles that can make your output videos look more contemporary and different.
