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

3D Perspective to Images and Shapes

The ability to add perspective to images, and maintain editability/adjustability adds some great design tools. Here is my sample image with two 3D perspective styles applied.


Both of these styles were applied in a matter of seconds from the preset options.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:44:08-08:00January 9th, 2008|Tutorial|

Gates and Keynote ???

Yesterday I was looking at the news headlines and this one immediately jumped out!

Does it mean that Mr. Gates is using Apple’s presentation application Keynote for his CES speech… Of course the answer is no – but this is a journalist faux pas as “keynote” refers to Mr. Gates keynote speech, not the software used.

Hmmm, yet another good marketing move from Apple.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:45:35-08:00January 7th, 2008|Resource/Misc|

Holiday Blues…

First I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year and I hope 2008 is a great success for everyone!

The holidays were fantastic, but January 2nd everyone was back in their offices and we have had an avalanche of emails and calls this week! I have gone from relaxing to stress – and I still need to get the holiday decorations put away…

I will be back with more posts beginning Monday. Have a great weekend!

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:46:00-08:00January 4th, 2008|Personal|

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|
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