If you followed along in Part 1, you now have a slide show that needs a bit of tweaking to make it look more polished.
Panning and Zooming
Because my camera creates photos with a 3:2 aspect ratio and the Slide Show Editor is limited to a narrower 4:3 aspect ratio, I'm going to end up with black space at the top and bottom of each photo in the slide show. I could correct this by cropping the photo to a 4:3 aspect ratio before sending it to the slide show, but I prefer not to lose parts of my image. Instead, I use some creative panning and zooming to avoid showing the black space. Yes, it takes a bit longer but I think the results are worth it.
- Make sure your Palette Bin is displayed (if it's not, go to View and click on Palette Bin so a checkmark appears next to it). Click on the first photo in your slide show and note that the Properties are displayed in the Palette Bin:
The properties of the photo include the duration, background color (that ugly black space) and the Pan and Zoom settings. The green box indicates what portion of the photo will be displayed at the beginning of the slide duration and the red box indicates where it will end. I need to adjust those so the black background doesn't show. (Note: if the Start and End thumbnail photos are displaying in black and white, click the Enable Pan and Zoom checkbox.) - Click on the Start thumbnail - you see a green box overlaid on the photo in the preview area. While we can't change the aspect ratio of this box, we can control its size and position.
- Position your cursor over one of the handles (the small boxes at each corner) until it changes to a double-ended arrow. Then click and drag until the box is size where you want. Position your cursor anywhere in the box (so the hand cursor is displayed) to move the box around. Just make sure the box is completely within the photo and doesn't stray into the black background. I'm going to position the start box at the top left corner of the photo:
- I like to then copy the start point to the end point ... very often I keep the same size and just change the position. By copying the start point setting to the end point, I don't have to resize the box again.
- Now I'm ready to define the end point - if I just want to pan across the slide, I would keep the same size and just change the position. But I want this to pan and zoom, so I'm going to change both. Click on the End thumbnail - you'll see that the end position is the same as the start because we copied the setting. I'm going to move the end point to the lower right and make the box bigger:
- At this point, you can click the Play button to see the effect you've created. Now you can set the Pan and Zoom for the rest of your photos. To make sure the effects are complementary between the slides, I like to start where I left off. That is, if the previous slide zoomed out (like this one), the next slide should zoom in (start with a large box and make it smaller).
Play around with the pan and zoom setting until you get the effect you're looking for - you can even add a second pan and zoom to a particular photo if there's something you particularly want to highlight.
Transitions
The default transition between slides is a 2-second fade, but there are other effects you use if you want. Personally, I only use the fade transition because I find the others annoying (LOL!) but, depending on the type of slide show you're creating, others may be useful.
To change the transition, click on the transition box between the two slides. You'll notice the properties in the Palette Bin now show the type and duration of the currently selected transition. Click on the dropdown box to display the available transitions. Depending on which one you choose, you may see an additional option to specify the direction of the transition.
Have fun experimenting with the different transition options, but try not to go crazy with them :-)
Beginning and Ending
I like my videos to fade in and out to a black screen and it's very simple to do. Simply highlight the first slide, then click on Add Blank Slide. The slide show editor will always add a new slide after the currently selected slide, so you'll have to move the new blank slide by clicking and dragging it before the first slide.
Set the duration of the blank slide to one or two seconds (click on the black arrow underneath the slide to display the duration dropdown box). Make sure the transition between the blank slide and the first photo is set to Fade. Done!
If you like, you can add text to the blank slide to make it a title slide - you can even add a pan and zoom. Personally, I like to create the title slide in Photoshop Elements because I have more control over the text effects, but that's just me.
Sending it to YouTube!
Okay, here we go ... you've set your pans & zooms, added your audio track and a title slide and you're ready to send it off. First of all, SAVE YOUR PROJECT! ... if you haven't already done so. I usually save mine several times while I'm working on it - you just never know what might happen.
Click on the Output ... button at the top of the screen. You'll see several options - we're going to choose Save to File to create a Windows Movie File that we can upload to YouTube.
I leave the slide size set to maximum, but this will create a large file so make sure you have enough disk space. Click OK, then get a cup of coffee :-)
Done? Okay, now we going to upload our video to YouTube. Log in to your YouTube account, click on the dropdown arrow next to your user name and select My Videos:
Click on the arrow next to New and select Video Upload.
After you upload the video, it will take YouTube some time to process it. Even once it's live, it will take a bit more time for YouTube to optimize your video so don't worry if it doesn't look great at first. Eventually (usually less than an hour), it will look much better.
Here's the one I created while you were following along: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvcIZY0PFcw
And here are a couple of others that I did in the last few months:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGfCjqadtMA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMHRkbm2Nq0
You may eventually find that the limitations of Photoshop Elements are hindering your efforts to make great videos, but it's sure a great place to start. When you're ready to move up, consider Premiere Elements - it's got a learning curve, for sure, but it supports video, multiple audio tracks, a large number of audio and video effects, and more. Even better, Premiere Elements allows you to upload high-definition videos directly to YouTube. Here's one I did recently - this was my first time doing adding a voiceover and I don't have the best audio equipment, but I learned a lot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh0_m9FSAzo.
Post links to your videos here ... can't wait to see what you do!
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