A great feature is resizing (enlarging or shrinking) images and autoshapes from their center point.
This feature is available in PowerPoint and Photoshop, but using different key combinations.
PowerPoint: CTRL + SHIFT + adjust with mouse
Photoshop: CTRL + ALT + adjust with mouse
– Troy @ TLC
Click here to go to the Office Online page with the download link for this great, and free, PPT 2007 presentation that has 15 picture effects. All effects are created entirely in PPT 2007 and the speaker notes have detailed step-by-step instructions on how to recreate the effects in your presentaitons.
Here are a few samples of the picture effects in this deck:
– Troy @ TLC
From yesterday’s post here is the real purpose of keeping a hidden backup. I saved out the chart as a .png image. Opened it in Photoshop, used the bars for reference to create a cut out line for the image. Then saved the new ‘chart’ out as a .png image and placed on the slide.
– Troy @ TLC
In searching for images for a current project I stumbled on indisain, a royalty free site that offers all images free of charge.
You do need to register in order to login and download images (without a watermark). I found the variety good, but the image size varied from usable (1280px wide) to unusable (100px wide). Images are categorized, but limited search capabilities with categories. And some categories had more images than others, such as the landscapes category with 72 pages of images.
If you need another image resource, you can check out indisain here.
– Troy @ TLC
This is a fun resource I discovered recently.
Vector-cartoons.com does require registering and has a weekly download limit. I was able to find exactly what was needed – as a high-quality fully editable vector image!
Note: for PPT download the .wmf version (I downloaded the .eps, modified in Illustrator and then exported as a .wmf).
– Troy @ TLC
I am preparing material for a PowerPoint/Design course and this is screen capture of my images folder from a recent project. My message is that a presentation is more than bullet points and an image can be more effective. I practice that message and this is shows the number of images prepared in Photoshop for a recent presentaiton.
– Troy @ TLC
Yes it’s true, if you have PowerPoint – or Word – or Excel, you can get free iStockPhoto images. That rarely used clipart feature has some new tricks. When you search for images the results may be istockphoto images. You can see all of the istockphoto images by just searching for “istockphoto”.
Note: images are istockphoto’s screen resolution version (ie. low res) and raster (no vector/emf).
– Troy @ TLC
Another emphasis animation that just does not work with images that have transparent, or semi-transparent areas is the VERTICAL HIGHLIGHT. Here is our sample image, which as a nice drop shadow and no background so it will work on any color background.
We then apply the VERTICAL EMPHASIS animation:
But when animated the nice transparent background becomes opacue/solid:
An alternative is to create the same effect with some advanced animation. First is to apply a GROW/SHRINK animation:
In the animation setting on the EFFECTS tab we need to:
1. Size needs to be greater than 100, how much will depend on your slide
2. Turn on SMOOTH START
3. Turn on SMOOTH END
4. Turn on AUTO REVERSE
The key to this effect is to use the drop-down and change the animation from BOTH to VERTICAL only:
– Troy @ TLC
Many of the emphasis animations do not respect the transparent properties of an image – whether it be a .png with alpha channel transparency or an image where PPT ‘Set Transparent Color’ tool was used. In most cases you can use some more advanced animation to create the same effect and not have the opacity problems.
Here is our image. It is a .png image created in Photoshop and it has no background.
But if we apply the TEETER emphasis animation
When animated the background changes from transparent to a solid color (blue in this instance)
We can create the same effect with some custom settings on the SPIN emphasis animation. So the first step is to apply the SPIN emphasis.
Then go into the animation properties and on the EFFECT tab change:
1. Amount from 360 to 5
2. Turn on Smooth Start
3. Turn on Smooth End
Then in the TIMING tab change:
1. The speed to VERY FAST (or faster)
2. Repeat to 3 times
Now the object will “teeter” and maintain its transparent background!
– Troy @ TLC
So I recently discovered a truly amazing online tool – Vector Magic! This web 2.0 app will convert virtually any image to a true vector graphic. It is the result of research by a team at Stanford and I have been really impressed with it!
1. Go to www.vectormagic.com
2. If it is your first time, watch the quick tutorial video
3. Click the BROWSE button and find a image on your computer you want to convert to vector format
4. With the image selected click UPLOAD
5. VectorMagic analyzes the image and makes a recommended setting about the type of image selected. You can change the selection now or later (after seeing render results)
6. Next is the quality setting, which defaults to MEDIUM. Here you can change the setting now or later after seeing the render results.
7. The fewer colors the smaller the image and VectorMagic wants to make small images, so the default is to use a color palette of 12 colors.
8. The image is then analyzed for colors (this is part of the incredible programming!)
9. Based on it analysis you have color options from 1 to 12 colors – select the one that looks to work with your original artwork. Because the TLC Creative logo has lots of subtle colors I selected the full 12 color palette.
10. VectorMagic then renders your image and displays a Before and After image.
11. Again, another great feature (especially for a web-based application) are the 3 preview options. When in single image it shows the vector version and when you click it shows the raster version. There is also a Google Earth style zoom tool on the left.
12. Here is the resulting vector image of the TLC Creative logo. I would say this is on par with some very expensive plug-ins I run for Illustrator.
13. On the right side are TROUBLE SHOOTING options which allow you to change any of the earlier selections.
For my image, the results are impressive but not really usable. So I changed the color palette to use MANY COLORS, which means not be limited to 12.
14. VectorMagic rendered my image again and this time the results are really incredible!
15. I went to the Trouble Shooting section one more time and rendered the TLC Creative logo on HIGH QUALITY vs. the medium setting – WOW!
16. When you have the image you want, there are 3 save options: .eps, .svg, .png
.EPS and .SVG can be converted in a vector application such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw to a .wmf (windows meta file), which is a vector format that PowerPoint recognizes. And .png is not a vector format, but is a format that PowerPoint recognizes.
– Troy @ TLC