Getting your photos out of a Photo Story 3 project
When Photo Story 3 saved a project, it copied every picture into the .wp3 file, along with the narration you recorded and any music you added. So even when the original photos are long gone, a .wp3 found on an old drive or in an email can give them back.
The free way, in a browser
Drop the .wp3 on the converter and choose Download the zip under Photos and sound. It works on Windows, macOS, Linux and a Chromebook, costs nothing, needs no account, and the project never leaves your computer. The zip holds:
- a
photosfolder with every picture, numbered in slide order and named after the original file wherever the project recorded the name - a
narrationfolder with a WAV file for each slide you spoke over, numbered the same way - a
musicfolder, if the project had background music slides.txt, which lists each slide with how long it stayed up, which files belong to it and the words of its caption
It also keeps project.xml, the project itself, in case you want it later. Unzip it and copy the photos folder into Pictures or wherever you keep them.
Doing it by hand on Windows
A .wp3 is a Microsoft Cabinet archive with a different extension. Copy the file, rename the copy so it ends in .cab instead of .wp3, and double-click it. File Explorer shows the files inside, and you can select them and drag them out. 7-Zip opens the .wp3 without renaming it.
The names inside are Photo Story's own: pictures as 0.jpg, 1.png and so on, narration as narration0.wav, music as SoundTrack0.mp3. Which picture goes with which slide, caption and narration is written in project.xml, not in the names. Sorting that out is the main thing the zip does for you.
What comes back, and what does not
The pictures are the copies Photo Story kept, which in the projects I have looked at were the full-size originals. Changes made inside Photo Story, such as a crop, a rotation or black and white, were saved as instructions in project.xml, so the photos come out as they were before those changes. Text typed onto a slide is stored the same way: the photos come out without it, and slides.txt has the words.
The narration comes back as plain WAV files that any computer plays. Music made with Photo Story's own "create music" button is not stored as a file, so that one cannot be recovered.
If you want the slideshow, not just the photos
The same page plays the whole project with its pan and zoom, captions and narration, free, and saves it as an MP4 video for a one-time US$19. Opening a Photo Story 3 project covers the other routes, including running Photo Story itself.