14 |^ |^ March 2020
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Do more with your photos
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ou’ve finally got your
photos in some kind of
order. But what’s the
point of having them
buried away in folders
if you’ve no means of
showing the best of them off? You
could invest in a digital photo frame
for your front room, run a slideshow
as your desktop backdrop in Windows
(head over to ‘Settings > Personalisation
> Background’ to set it up) or create a
photos slideshow running as a screen
saver (type ‘screen saver’ into the
Search box to find the tool, then
choose Photos from the ‘Screen saver’
drop-down menu).
Remember when older family
members set up slideshow
presentations of their latest holiday?
Recreate the effect via a video-based
slideshow, with added music, effects
and captions to help describe what’s
going on and keep your audience
interested. Our favourite tool by far for
this job is Microsoft Sway – get it for
free through the Microsoft Store. Your
presentations are stored online but can
be kept private or shared as widely as
you’d like. The step-by-step guide
reveals the basic steps to getting it up
and running.Print a photo album
Sometimes there’s no substitute for
old-school prints and photo albums.
These days, of course, you don’t justbuy photo prints then manually
stick them into an album – everything
is done digitally before being paid for,
printed and dispatched. Many services
like Photobox (www.photobox.co.uk)
operate exclusively through your web
browser, but Pixum (www.pixum.co.uk/
photo-book/software) allows you to
download and install free software
for you to create your perfect
photobook in.
Once installed, launch the program
and select the photo book option.
Choose your book type followed bypaper quality and then choose ‘start
with assistant’. Select your photos
folder (you can also link Google and
Facebook accounts if you wish for
photos stored online). Now give your
book a title, drag the photos (or a
folder containing your photos) on to
the main window, pick a theme and
let the program do the rest.
From here you can manually tweak
your photobook – add new photos,
change page layouts, insert text and so
on – before previewing and ordering
your final copy.Create a digital photo slideshow
1
First steps
Open Sway and click ‘Create New’.
Give your sway a suitable title, then click
the Background link to the left to give
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can upload a photo or use the online
Bing search tool to locate an image you
can use.3
More effects
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parts of a photo, plus creating bulleted
and numbered lists and all kinds of useful
elements. Experiment and click the Play
button regularly to see how your
presentation is shaping up.2
Add photos
Click the ‘+’ symbol beneath the
title to add a new element: text (heading
or plain text), media (images, video, audio
clips and so on) and group (includes
interactive clickable elements like a stack
of photos). Drag images into your
slideshow and add a caption.Turn your digital cache of photos into a striking
photo book to view or share with others.