Dreamstudio Tutorial: Advanced

Now we're ready to apply some effects. We will be doing that via the tabs found on the Workspace Area (see Blog Tutorial, 07 December 2006 entry).

Photo
As I've mentioned earlier, the Slide Control Box will be needed tp upload photos or videos. So what is this for? Simply put, this is where you will be able to manipulate the photo that you've uploaded. Here, you can resize, rotate, and flip the picture that you make. Example: you can make a mirror image of the image you're using by flipping it either horizontally or vertically.

Alternatively, you can manually resize or rotate a picture on the Workspace area itself. Click on the image. Do you see the little white squares on the edges? By moving your mouse here and then dragging it, you can resize the image. You can also rotate it by clicking and dragging the little R button appearing at the top right image when you click on it.


Movie
It works essentially the same way as Photo, except with this, you can control the start and end time of it.


Text
Here, you can add and edit the text written on your image. By clicking Create, a new text box will appear on your slide. You can then input whatever text you want the slide to contain. You can choose any of the following fonts: Arial, Arial Black, MS Gothic, MS Mincho, or Verdana. You can also set this in Bold or Italics, and also define which alignment you want to use.

The Link button can be used to link two slides together, or link that slide to a URL.


Effect
The Special Effects are divided into two categories:

Special: Confetti, Moving Slides, Film, Color Blaster, Ripple, Color Variation, Fog
Other: Roaming Transparent..., Raining, Waterdrop, Twinkle, Snow, Money

Slide Transition: Cover, Reveal, Press, Zoom, Fade through, Special, Others (with derivations)


Slide
Screen Size: Adjusts the height and width of each slide
Duration: Here, you can manipulate how long each slide will appear (in seconds). Alternatively, you can do this in the Slide Control Box, below the mini-versions of your slides
Background Color: If you don't want the background of the slides to be in plain white, you can change the color here. Just click on the color you want, then apply, and the new color's there. You can even format it to be the same background color for all your slides by clicking “Apply to All.”
Background Image: You can upload an picture here and let it serve as the background, similar to background color. Again, you can also make this as the same background for all slides by clicking “Apply to All.”
Link: Works the same way as the Link function under Text.


Extra
Special Effect: Special Sanrio-specific effects, like Hello Kitty dancing the hula, My Melody on a swing, etc. There are also non-Sanrio options, such as the lightning and TV screen effects.
Background Music: You can either use the ones pre-loaded or upload your own MP3 file to use as the background music for your entire slide show. Uptown, Sunset Lullaby, and Let's Shop are the ones in the default playlist.


Play Option
You can choose to make your video play only once or in a loop, that is, continuously playing.