This past Sunday, I came into the Mac lab with my fellow editors-in-chief, Shivani Khanna and Andrea Park. (I would like to note that we were the only editors who came in.)

Anyways, we were working on an audio slideshow meant to illustrate and describe the summer French trip, of which both Shivani and I were a part. The slideshow will be published soon, and all of you better appreciate it, because I am here to explain the process, just to enlighten you all to the hard work we editors do.

The creation of an audio slideshow begins with the photos. We had to sift through the hundreds of photos that everyone on the trip took, decide which ones we could use, open them all in Adobe Photoshop, then enhance and resize them. That's a long process. Then, add in the Mac issue, if you know what I mean, and we had to force quit and reopen Photoshop at least two times during this first stage.

So, assuming we make it through this, we must then record the audio. This includes writing out a narrative that matches the photos, going to Mr. Porreca's office, and recording what we've written. But, we must make sure that when we speak into the microphone to record, we aren't too close that it's spitty but not too far away that it's muddy. We must make sure there aren't any clicks, extensize pauses, or background noises. We must speak clearly, no mumbling and always correct pronunciation. Then we have to convert the audio to MP3.

OK, so perhaps we finally have all the necessary parts of the slideshow. We download the images and the audio onto the slideshow software called Soundslides. Then, we have to time everything perfectly, so that the images and the audio match up.

Finally, we use the panning and zooming capabilities to create movement and to zoom in and out of pictures. Occasionally we add captions to the pictures as well.

We save the slideshow and upload it online.

Then, we are done.

So, don't assume for one minute that this process is short or easy. It is hard, complicated, and long. I could use more vulgar and inappropriate words to describe it. When that French trip slideshow is finally published, I want all of you to give major props to its creators. Think about giving up five hours of your life in the name of multimedia.

That's all. I hope you have a nice day, and an excellent Sunday.