The PowerPoint® Blog

I work with PowerPoint on a daily basis and I am very honored to be a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP. We have a talented team of presentation designers at TLC Creative Services and ThePowerPointBlog is our area to highlight PowerPoint tips, tricks, examples and tutorials. Enjoy! Troy Chollar

Pictures In Autoshapes

One of the creative things possible in earlier versions was to fill an autoshape (circle, rectangle, triangle, etc.) with an image. This required:
– creating the autoshape
– go through 4-7 steps to fill shape with the photo

But now things are MUCH EASIER!
– Insert photo
– With photo selected choose any autoshape
– Done!

In less than 1 minute all of these custom images were created:

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:46:21-08:00December 26th, 2007|Tutorial|

Soft/Feathered Edge

Needless to say, but I am able to spend more time in PowerPoint than with any previous version. Here is another reason – the Soft Edge feature! Previously I would work with an image in Photoshop, save it out as a .png and then insert into the presentation. Here is our sample image with a soft edge applied:

AND a key with the softedges, drop shadows, and glows is that all add transparency. This means the images can easily be layered on top of other images or textured backgrounds.

The presets are setup in how much is feathered away, which is measured in Points.

The only downside to this feature is that the image must have a uniform soft edge all the way around it – no on just a few sides…. back to Photoshop when this is needed.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:47:10-08:00December 24th, 2007|Tutorial|

Reflections….

One of the current design crazes is the subtle mirrored reflection of an image. With PowerPoint 2007 you can be a hip and trendy designer effortlessly with its built in reflection features!

There are a number of preset reflections which vary the intensity of the reflection as well as the distance between the bottom edge and start of reflection.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:47:29-08:00December 21st, 2007|Tutorial|

Bevelled Edges (Yeah!)

Here again, is a great feature that eliminates time spent in Photoshop prepping images! A variety of bevel effects can be applied to any image – here are two:


A variety of bevel effects can instantly be applied with the presets:

I am going to cover the advanced settings in detail a bit later, but the bevel feature really lends itself to using the advanced settings, which is the menu opened when the “3D Options” is selected. It offers lots of customization options:

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:47:55-08:00December 19th, 2007|Tutorial|

It’s All Aglow

A glow is similiar to a drop shadow – soft feathered edge, any color, etc. The difference is a glow uniformly goes around the entire image vs. offset on 1 or 2 sides. Here is our sample image with a blue glow applied.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:47:45-08:00December 17th, 2007|Tutorial|

Shadow Presets

One of the great decisions on the Microsoft design team was to make most features have a set of presets – the most common ways to use that feature (of course the better would be to allow the user to also develop and add their own creations to the presets).

To access the shadow presets:
Select an image >> go to the FORMAT tab >> PICTURE EFFECTS >> SHADOW

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:48:07-08:00December 14th, 2007|Tutorial|

Real Shadows!

As shown a few posts ago on text, PowerPoint 2007 has vastily improved drop shadows! Now we are able to create a nice “photoshop” feathered shadow. Here is our sample image with drop shadow applied:

This is a true soft feathered edge shadow:

With this one feature I have eliminated lots of time preparing images in PhotoShop!

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:48:27-08:00December 13th, 2007|Tutorial|

Office 2007 SP1 Released

Service Pack 1 for Office 2007 has been released ahead of schedule!

It should remedy some issues, especially if running Vista and Office 2007, and has a number of performance and stability updates. Microsoft’s info and download page is here (although it is officially released you may have to wait a bit longer as the download page on Microsoft’s website seems to be down for the moment….).

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:49:25-08:00December 11th, 2007|Software/Add-Ins|
Copyright TLC Creative Services, Inc | All Rights Reserved
Go to Top