Animated Photo Album

Introduction
About Animated Photo Album
Download and Installation
Using Animated Photo Album
Pricing and Support
Conclusion

Introduction

While PowerPoint includes a very capable Photo Album feature that lets you quickly insert multiple photos in a presentation, you still need to add the animations yourself -- also there's no navigation between viewing pictures and slides.

Our review product is a PowerPoint add-in that simplifies the process of inserting pictures with animation and navigation.

About Animated Photo Album

Animated Photo Album is from PowerPoint Alchemy, a company based in the UK. You can learn more about Animated Photo Album and download the demo version from their site.

Animated Photo Album allows you to batch import images into an animated photo album presentation -- each page of the photo album includes five thumbnails which grow-animate to the larger-central photo in turn (on click) -- see Figure 1.

Figure 1: A slide within the animated photo album presentation

There are two versions available for the addin:

• The free version, which is fully functional but has a limit of 25 images.
• The Professional version which can make large albums of up to 500 images and has a larger variety of frame shapes.

This review is based on the Professional version.

My contact at PowerPoint Alchemy for this review was John Wilson -thank you, John.

Download and Installation

Download the installer from the their site, run the setup routine and follow the instructions.

When installed, the add-in creates an Animated Album toolbar within PowerPoint as shown in Figure 2 -- if you don't find it there choose View | Toolbars | Animated Album Toolbar.

Figure 2: Animated Photo Album Toolbar

Using Animated Photo Album

Follow these step to start working with Animated Photo Album.

1. Open Microsoft PowerPoint, and click on the highlighted button, as shown in Figure 3.
2. 
   Figure 3: This button helps you create the photo album
2. When clicked, this opens the Layout dialog box (see Figure 4 ). Here you can choose the placing of the picture thumbnails. Choose from Left or Right, and click OK.
3. 
   Figure 4: Layout
3. You next see the Change the Shape of Picture dialog box, as shown in Figure 5.
4. 
   Figure 5: Change the Shape of Picture
5. Choose the shape (frame) for the picture, and click OK to continue.
Note: Flag frame option is only available within PowerPoint 2007
4. You will now be prompted to give a title to the album, as shown in Figure 6. Once done, click OK.
5. 
   Figure 6: Albums title
5. This opens the dialog box that you can see in Figure 7 -- select multiple photos for the album as required, and click OK.
6. 
   Figure 7: Select photos
6. This will create the album that you saw in Figure 1 (refer earlier on this page).

Pricing and Support

Animated Photo Album Professional version costs $19.99, while the basic version is free.

Support is through e-mail.

Conclusion

Animated Photo Album is a helpful add-in for PowerPoint if you need to create many photo slide shows with animation -- you'll save a lot of time, and you can always try the free version and then upgrade to the Professional version based on your requirements.