Merry X’mas

I made a set of slides as X’mas eCard (3 Mb) and sent to my colleagues and friends. Many wonder how I made those slides and here are the details …

1. First, I took a lot of photos from shopping malls, those with X’mas decorations [Tool : Olympus E-1, E-300, E-510]
2. Picked 6 to 7 photos, processed them (i.e. resize, sharpening etc.) and prepared a set of B&W version, then a set of colored version [Tool : FastStone, PhotoImpact]
3. I then searched for the X’mas song Little Drummer Boy from the Net in WAV format (i.e. a format that supports by PowerPoint)
4. Processed the song to find a right spot to fade out the song (as the original is too long), and to find a right compression bit ratio (as the original is too big) [Tool : AudaCity]
5. Sampled the song again to determine the best time to advance the photos (i.e. find some good spots to in-sync with the slide transition)
6. Searched a good X’mas poetry from the Net to fit the slides
7. Last step – created the slides, inserted the B&W photos, then the colored photos, added in fade-in effect, added the background music in the first slide, timed the slide, added in transition effect, added in the content, saved as PowerPoint Slideshow … [Tool : PowerPoint]

Not bad, I believe …

Author: Michael Yung

Michael possessed over 30 years of experience in Information Technology with focuses on complex application development, database technologies and IT strategy. He also spent the last 20 years in Internet technology, eCommerce development / operations, web usability, computer security and Public Key Infrastructure technologies. View all posts by Michael Yung