Expert: Kamal Krishna - 7/16/2007

Question
QUESTION: Dear Kamal
  This question is not entirely a Photoshop question, but since you have a diverse background in computers, I
thought I would ask you.
  As a ESL teacher, I've made a lot of multi-layer jpegs with photos and text in PS and used PowerPoint to present the full jpegs in slideshows. My idea was why use a powerpoint template when you can use a full jpeg background and layer other photos and text on top?
    Now, I wish to make a like series of jpegs again (with mp3s) in a ESL lesson program that can be presented in a mobile phone that can reach the greatest number of students. Do you have any suggestions about how I may do this in a simple way? No sophisticated programming skills here, but I would learn to use a simple program.
   Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Best Wishes
         Fran Mausley


ANSWER: Hi fran,
What i understand here is you want a slide show of jpegs with background music to run on a mobile phone.

First is use photoshop to save each layer as a separate file, just as you'd do for the power point presentation.

Then use 'Flash' to create the slide show and add the mp3 as a background music.

The latest version of Flash (CS3) enables to create stuff which are compatible with the mobile phones, but since you want to distribute this to all the students, and all their phone might not support flash.

The best option would be exporting this slide show to '.avi' format.

Convert it avi to 3GP file using many of the free tools available online (try googling 'avi to 3GPP converting tool').

3GP format is compatible on almost all the current mobile phones. So you can bluetooth/MMS to all of the students.

Feel free to ask me for further help if any. (I'm well versed with Flash too.)

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Kamal
Thanks for your instantaneous reply! What I plan to do is to take a jpeg of clip art (say an 'airplane'), saturate the color and then darken it just enough so that color (lime, yellow, pink) text could be read on top of it. So, I will have a darken airplane and I place this English Language dialog lesson text over it:
         TRAVEL
         Have you ever
         been to Greece?        (yellow, speaker 1)
         No, I never have.
         How about you?         (lime, speaker 2)
         No, but I hope
         to go someday.         (yellow, speaker 1)
Also, there's no music, but the student will hear a separate mp3 clip of the above dialog exactly as he/she reads it.
  So, it has dialog text in 2 colors for 2 speakers, the
hint of a clip art airplane in the background to support thr travel idea and the separate mp3 with a male and a female voice.
    A university department head wants me to come up with a commercial product like this.
  I know flash is BIG now, Should i learn about loading jpegs amd mp3s in flash or as an .avi? There are so many different kinds of phones out there?
Best Wishes
         Frank

Answer
Hi Frank,
Flash is BIG, but this kind of thing is very very very simple to do in Flash, even for a beginner (I recommend Flashkit.com has many ready-made flash sources and also tutorials for reference.).  

This is just some manual work in flash, nothing complicated so no 'actionscripting' needed here.

And once you've done it in flash you can export it to the desired output. In this case, avi (so it includes audio too).

[If you still want to get away without flash, then use any other tool, which helps you create a slide show, with audio included. and also exports into .avi]

And then use the free/shareware tools to convert it to 3GPP format.

3GPP format is the best, because its compatible with almost all the phones out there. (Trust me, i make mobile games and applications too :)

All the best.
Kamal