The same person who sent me the Flip Mino, which I reviewed—and totally fell in love with—on a past Daily Dish (it has since been “misplaced”...I’d rather not talk about it) asked me to try out One True Media, a site whose mission is to “empower you to express yourself in new and creative ways with the media that matters to you most – your own – and to share your creations with your most important network – your family and friends.”

Okay, I have to be honest here; though I am a pro with things like Shutterfly (I can design a mean Christmas card) and Facebook albums I have never tried to create one of those cute videos like you see at wedding receptions with the photos in a slideshow-type format set to music. For my oldest girls’ baptisms I handed that responsibility to my dad, who did a knock-up job with it. (It’s SO his thing.) Fortunately the now-MIA Flip Mino eased me into the whole uploading to YouTube thing so I was excited to try One True Media and see just how easy (hopefully) it would be to create my own cool photo show.

Super cool. Super easy. Super, dee-duper fun! Yep, that pretty much covers it. I signed in to my One True Media account (much of the site is free; premium membership gives you access to extra templates, songs, and services) and decided to dive right in without the help of tutorials. I selected one of the montage QuickStyles and within minutes I was uploading about 30 photos for my very first montage (a.k.a. hip slide show with music). I then put them in order, played around with things like transition and effects (I almost sound like a pro) and even uploaded my own song. I changed the timing on some of the photos and voila! I got the song and photo montage to end at the exact same time. The process was so easy I bet my girls could easily do it (i.e. I shouldn’t have any problems).

Once the montage was done I had a number of actions from which to choose. I could email it, embed the code into my favorite sites, post it to YouTube, share it to TiVo, add it to One True Media’s public gallery, send it to a mobile phone or post it to TypePad. And for those who like to hold a physical copy of their creations in their hands, you can even purchase a DVD. I exercised my right to choose and did two things: emailed it and embedded it. Now you get to “review” my very first montage. I took about 30 pictures from 2008—a very small sampling for sure but a good overview nonetheless…

I didn’t spend a ton of time on my first montage attempt but I sure could have! It was so much fun and I’m already trying to figure out what I will create next to share with friends and family. My only complaint? One True Media is highly addictive so proceed with caution. I get very little sleep as it is so I’m going to have to control my newfound addiction to it!—Emily

tags albums, One True Media, online, photo montage, photography, slideshow, Technology, TiVo, website, youtube

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 10:19 pm and is filed under Daily Dish. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.