Sportscenter-Style Text Effects

Photo Story shines in many ways, and can do things that other programs like Windows Movie Maker cannot do.  You're probably aware that Windows Movie Maker and Photo Story 3 are very complementary programs.  It's true.  Using either one alone yields a great result.  Use them together, and you have something phenominal.

This will be the first in a two-part series on creating professional-looking effects with Windows Photo Story.  Part 2 will concentrate on leveraging Windows Movie Maker's abilities along with Photo Story 3's to make a truly great presentation.

It's About the Motion

Surely you've seen ESPN's SportCenter or ABC Sports college football.  Most of the time they will overlay scores or players bios on top of  a moving background with the words "ESPN SPORTCENTER" or "BOWL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES" or something similar.  Most of the time you do not realize that its there, but the effect is that your foreground is much more exciting.  Imagine if all scores were on a black or white background.  It would look like a PowerPoint presentation (which is good for business environments, but bad for high-energy and dynamic sporting events).

Fortunately, Photo Story gives us the ability to recreate these effects.

Getting Started

To Render, or Not To Render

Since Photo Story allows you to overlay text onto any image, you have a decision to make.  If you want to be able to reuse the image in the future, its best to leave the text rendering to Photo Story.  However, if you want absolute control over your text, make it part of the image.  Remember, right now we are only concentrating on the background.

Generating the Background

Use your favorite graphics program to create a fluid background.  Solid colors are nice and there are swatches available on in the Creating Title-Only Slides guide.  Gradients are even better, and we will use one here.  Anything with a low-contrast (little noise) will work.  I've chosen to include the text as part of my image, using the tools from PhotoShop to dress it up a little (notice my letters are not a solid color, but rather an overlay of the color below).

This is a resized version of the image I used.  The original is 7200x600.

Let Photo Story Handle the Rest

Next, I imported the slide into Photo Story.

Notice you will immediately have the option to remove black borders.  First, Photo Story will most likely be unable to do this.  However, you do not need to worry about the black borders because our path of motion will remain inside it.

Move on to the Customize Motion dialog by pressing the Customize Motion... button on the Narrate Your Pictures dialog.  On all my tests, Photo Story seems to have the uncanny ability to "guess" where I want the motion to go.  On large images, you'll want to set the duration, so that scrolling doesn't occur too slowly (or too quickly).

The Bottom Line

In Part 2 we'll look at using this along with Windows Movie Maker to create a truly fantastic effect.