After I first posted a blog titled "Animated Blogging" last April, I continued over the following months to receive requests asking about the process I use to create the slide shows like the one pictured above.  With the advent of the new ActiveRain Photo Blogger group, tools for enhancing blogs for Photo Blogger devotees becomes even more of an interest.

The process I use is rather straight forward and simple to use, when using Paint Shop Pro with it's Animation Shop "wizard" function.  The screen captures below will walk you through it.

Open the Paint Shop Pro program.  Go to "File," scroll down and select "Run Animation Shop."  When Animation Shop comes up, go to "File" and select Animation Wizard.  Your first screen will come up which looks like the following.  For the animation illustrated at the top of this page, I used photos all of the same size: 640 pixels wide, and a 480 pixels height.  After you have input your size dimensions, hit "next."

When I do these animations, I generally select "Transparent" for my background color, and then hit "Next."

The following screen capture demonstrates the way I usually fill in the selections.  I then hit "Next."

When reaching the following screen I select "Yes, repeat the animation indefinitely" so that it repeats.  I also choose 300/100ths of a second (equates to 3 seconds) for each picture to display.  Remember to multiply the number of seconds you wish to display each picture by 100 to get the timing you desire.  Then hit "Next."

The following screen will allow you to add the images you wish to have as part of your animation.  You select these files from your hard-drive, etc.  Once you have selected all desired images, you hit "Next."

When you see the following screen, you are nearing the end of the process.  Select "Finish."

Once the Animation Wizard has completed the building of your animation, you will see a series of frames as viewed below.

Once you see your frames as above, you can hit the little button indicated by the red arrow on your tool box.  This will allow you to preview your animation. 

To save your animation, hit "Save As" and the following screen comes up.  I prefer to select "Better Image Quality" and then hit "Next"

After hitting "Next" the program begins the "optimization" process, and when complete provides you with the "optimization" results.  I then select "Finish".  Paint Shop Pro will save your animation as a "gif" file.

Once the animation file is complete, it will be important to upload the file to a web domain, and not directly upload it to ActiveRain.  The reason for this, is that the animation will remain static and not slide from picture to picture otherwise. 

When adding the animation file to your ActiveRain blog, click on the "insert picture" button, but rather than the "upload" option, select the URL or web address for the animation file instead.

 
*Note from Myrl: There are other slide show tools out there that I haven't yet explored myself, but produce wonderful results.  I highly recommend that if you have an interest in Photo Blogging or Photo Slide Shows that you join the ActiveRain Photo Blogger group.