Organisation and Presentation [for Windows]

This is a guide to the organisation and presentation of your digital pictures. By the end you should be able to: sort through your pictures with ease, make quick touch-ups (red-eye, sharpness, colour), and present your pictures as a rockin' slide show with tunes and Ken-Burns effects to melt the hearts of your loved ones. [Note: This is a Microsoft Windows-centric guide, an Apple OSX guide will follow shortly]

I am going to assume you know how to get the pictures off of your camera, and onto your computer. Likewise if you use a film camera you hopefully know how to get your pictures on CD or something else. If not let me know.

First off, let's get the software you need. All of the software/programs you need for this are free of charge (isn't the world great?!). Open up another window or tab in your browser and head to:

Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/) is a great tool to help you find, organise, and edit your pictures. There are other features such as making screen savers, desktop backgrounds, movies. Once you have Picasa downloaded and installed let me know....

...ok you have it? Good. It should look something like this:

Now what it should have done is find every picture (.jpg, .gif, etc.) on your computer and organise them in a nice layout. The folders are all where you left them, now you can view them all in one place. You can also hide folders you don't want to show up in Picasa.

Mess around in Picasa for awhile and get a feel for it. I could go more indepth if people want. Now let's make a slide show.

Photo Story 3 for Windows is what you want next. It is free and a great slide show tool. Comparable to the photo program that comes with Apple OSX. Download it and install. Once there you just drag and drop pictures into the order you want. Add music, publish.. and you are all set!

You can get into more details and make different transition effects and Ken Burns effects!

Any questions just comment below!