SoundSlides - Using Captions

You can have the Captions display by default or give the option for the viewer to click on them and make them show in the far right hand corner.

My last post let you create titles that will float over the images in the lower third of the slide. You could have this title stay up for as long as you want while the slides changed under it.

This blog post will help you know how to use the Caption tool.

Captions that are embedded in your photos IPTC information can easily be shown in the slide show of SoundSlides. Basically there are two options. You can show them by default or make it an option that the viewer can click to view a caption.

In the template settings of SoundSlides you have two things that you can check. You can have a menu for showing the captions in the footer of the slide show and you can have the captions show by default.

If it is important that everyone see the captions then choose the default to show them. Sometimes you want the audience to be able to interact and choose to see them after they watch the show for more information.  This might be why you have "Show Captions" menu item in the footer to give the audience an option to see them.

You can modify or create the caption under the menu item "Slide Info" and "Details."  SoundSlides will import your caption from your IPTC field if one exists. 

You may want to modify your caption after you have already imported images into SoundSlides.  Just to the tab menu item "Slide Info" and the sub-tab item of Details to then modify the text.

You can modify the appearance of the caption in 5 ways: 1) font, 2) size of font, 3) color of text, 4) color of background, & 5) opacity of background.

You will want to play with the appearance of the captions. You can modify type of font, size, color and opacity. Remember this will affect the entire slideshow captions.  You are not changing individual appearance from slide to slide.

You can clear all the imported captions quickly if you like

HTML support

You can style your captions using HTML tags. Supported tags include b, i, u, font, br and a.

Turning the slide into a link

In addition to adding HTML links, you can also add code that will turn the slide itself into a link. By adding the following to your caption, you would make your image link to http://soundslides.com: [clickimagelink]http://soundslides.com[/clickimagelink]

By adding the following to your caption, you would make your image link to http://soundslides.com and open the link in a new window:
[clickimagelink_new]http://soundslides.com[/clickimagelink_new]

Check out this example




Captions are just another tool that you can use to help communicate your message to the audience. Take a look at the SlideShow I did here on community service project. I made the captions an option just so you could see how they look by default.  I used the default setting for the text size and colors.

Summary

Learn all you can do with a software even if you choose not to use a particular tool, because you may want to use it later for a client or know what it does before you invest in another software package.  I am surprised as to how often people buy another software to do what their present software can do, but they failed to read the manual and master it before jumping to something new.