The PowerPoint® Blog Archives - Page 48 of 228

Creativity Is Not…

I read this quote recently and it resonated enough to be something to share. Mr. Kleon continues on saying creativity is not a talent, but a way of operating. That we should not think of creativity as a noun – something you have, but as a verb – something you do.

TLC Creative Services has a VERY talented team, so it is noun – something we have! And it is a verb, everything we do – the creative and the “non-creative” aspects of our work – is approached with attention to detail, a perfection mindset, and creativity. Even this blog post is an unintentional example, the above quote typography and layout was composited in PowerPoint (our design tool of choice) vs. typing out a preformatted bullet line of text with quote marks 😊.

Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2021-07-04T10:33:34-07:00July 5th, 2021|Personal|

Ranked in the Top 15!

This month we received a wonderful email letting us know The PowerPoint Blog was “selected by our panelist as one of the Top 15 PowerPoint Blogs on the web.” Thank you Feedspot for the recognition!

See all 15 presentation podcasts in the Feedspot recommended list here.

– Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2021-06-17T16:54:13-07:00June 30th, 2021|Resource/Misc|

A Better Way to Hide Slides

Quick, which is the hidden slide!?

PowerPoint does not make it easy. There are visual indicators; the page number has a (thin, small) line through it and the slide itself is (faintly) dimmer than the others. And this is if you are in PowerPoint slide sorter view. On a printout, if the hidden slides are included in the printout, there is NO indicator if a slide is included in the slideshow or skipped because it is hidden.

Back in September 2016 I shared my solution, a .png image overlay to visually show when a slide is hidden (if you need a 4×3 version of the hidden overlay, find it on the Sept. 2016 blog post here).

Jump to present day 2021 and 4×3 is not the size presentations we create any longer. So here is an update with a 16×9 version of our Hidden Overlay image.

With the Hidden Overlay .png it is much easier to know which slides are hidden (hint: the slide on the left is the hidden one 😊).

One issue that comes up with adding the Hidden Overlay, if you manually go to this slide, everyone sees a giant “Hidden” across the slide. This is overcome with a preset animation that makes the hidden image not show up to the audience. Download the sample slide and try it.

Download the 16×9 Hidden Overlay .png here.

Download a slide with the Hidden Overlay and disappear animation preset here.

Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2021-06-12T13:28:58-07:00June 28th, 2021|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

What is PowerPoint Autofix?

Auto Fix is a new native PowerPoint feature that is designed to help align content on slides more quickly.

Auto Fix can help automatically align, uniformly resize, and distribute elements and straighten the connectors between them. It is pretty magical (okay, really good coding). But it is only currently available if using PowerPoint for the web

Select the objects (images, shapes, text boxes) > go to the HOME tab > SHAPE > ARRANGE > AUTOFIX

Or, find Auto Fix button with a right click. Select the shapes > right click one of the shapes > AUTO FIX is half way down the options available.

As example, here are 3 randomly placed shapes on a slide.

After selecting all three shapes and running Auto Fix, this is what PowerPoint provided – vertically aligned, equal spacing between objects and centered on the slide:

One note, Auto Fix currently does not work with SmartArt, group shapes and elements that overlap.

Another recommendation is to use Auto Fix on smaller groups of elements to get their positioning and alignment updated, then adjust any additional elements either with another Auto Fix run, or manually position for the final layout.

One more Before & After example of something a bit more complex. The bottom aligned layout was created by Auto Fix in a single click:

Christie @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2021-06-01T10:56:03-07:00June 25th, 2021|PowerPoint|

PowerPoint Recommends What File You Want to Open

Microsoft 365 has a new AI integration. When you go to File > Home, there is a list of presentation files that PowerPoint has determined you want to open now.

This feature should be available on all 365 versions (Windows, Mac, mobile and web). Go to FILE > HOME > RECOMMENDED FOR YOU section. Based on your workflow, Office’s AI algorithm lists the presentation files it feels you are most likely to want to open now!

The Recommended for You list is only presentations that are stored on Teams/OneDrive/SharePoint. So any files you have on your local computer or local company network are not included. And it is not a list of just the 6 most recent files you have opened. I open dozens of presentations files each day (okay, I open 50+ presentation files each day, but currently about a dozen+ are hosted on Teams and show up in the Recommended for You area). The far right file in the list is dated May 21, which was over a month ago vs the other presentations in the list, but it was a similar topic and was amazingly similar to the topic I was working on…

The only confusing thing about this feature is that it is not a part of the File > Open information.

Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2021-06-11T10:27:58-07:00June 23rd, 2021|PowerPoint|

Fake People Images for Real Presentations

Presentations can use lots of images. For the random person image, there are many royalty free image sites (eg. legal to use images, not randomly copying an image owned by someone else and adding to a presentation). But in a twist of technology, there is another option.

The “This Person Does Not Exist” website is a never ending display of deep fake people headshots. You do not know what is going to displayed, just keep refreshing the page to get a different image. Also, once an image is gone, you are not going to find it again!

Go to https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/. It is a very simple website. No navigation, menus, or text. Just a photo of a person – that does not exist (more on this in a moment).

What is a “deep fake”? Search the web for details. My simplistic answer is, a deep fake is a photograph generated through AI algorithms that pull details from many photos (many of the source photos already fake images) to composite a new, very realistic looking image. So the above image is literally no one. This is not a real person. He does not exist. And yes, he looks very real (tip: don’t believe any image on social media!).

I said the ThePersonDoesNotExist.com website has no content beyond the photo. But it does. In the lower right is a popup information box that has some information and links to 3 Youtube videos the author of this website created to explain, and inform, what Nvidia’s (yes the graphics card company) Style GAN2 software is. The summary is, StyleGAN2 is the AI system that created all of these very realistic, but fake, people images.

Check out Henry AI Labs video # 1 on YouTube for some fascinating information on how Deep Fake images are created (it is link “1” in the info popup).

So, why include a website like ThePersonDoesNotExist.com on a presentation design blog?

Because of what we started with, presentations need lots of images – people images. I am not speaking with authority here, but if the image is of a person that does not exist, was generated by an AI algorithm and available to anyone with no copyright notice, I am going with the idea that this is a perfect, legal and random “person” image that can be used in a presentation!

The images from this site are 1024×1024, so not quite full screen. They are also in the .jfif file format, which most people have not used (it is a fancy .jpg, just use it).

Jake at the TLC Creative studio created a few example slide layouts with images from this site in use. And the names were created on a name generator site!

Fake names. Fake images. Real slides.

– Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2021-06-21T10:45:13-07:00June 21st, 2021|Resource/Misc|

Is That a Ball or an Egg?

One thing easy to do in PowerPoint is to distort images. Often it is unintentional, but it happens fairly often. As example, on this slide, the picture looks distorted.

The soccer ball looks distorted, more of an egg shape than round ball. Here is how to check: select the image > go to the FORMAT PICTURE tab > go to SIZE & PROPERTIES tab > look at SCALE HEIGHT and SCALE WIDTH.

All images should be 100% x 100% if they are using the original size. If the image has been resized to be smaller or larger, the percentage will adjust, but should remain the same value in each field. Here the height and width are different, telling us the image has been distorted and is wider than it’s height.

The simple fix is to make both fields that same value, say 100% x 100%. Then resize the picture using one of the 4 corners to maintain the aspect ratio.

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2021-06-01T09:47:40-07:00June 18th, 2021|Tutorial|

This image is Blurry, How Big is it?

Continuing looking at images in presentations, this time we are literally looking at an image on a slide and noting it appears “blurry”. The question is why? The #1 reason is the image has a small resolution and has been enlarged on the slide. Here is how to check and confirm.

The image here is not full slide, but it is noticeably blurry.

Select the image > go to the PICTURE FORMAT tab > click the RESET PICTURE dropdown menu > click RESET PICTURE AND SIZE.

The image will reset to its original/real size. In this example, the guess that the image was small and had been enlarged on the slide is correct. After resetting the image to the original size, it is MUCH smaller, hence the blurry resolution when it was enlarged.

Another option, also describe in the previous post, is to select the image > open the FORMAT PICTURE pane > go to the SIZE AND PROPERITES tab > review the SCALE HEIGHT and SCALE WIDTH settings. This image has been enlarged to 400% from the original (4X its original size). Just from the numbers, we know it is not going to be a crisp image display…

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2021-05-31T14:44:03-07:00June 16th, 2021|Tutorial|

Listen to The Presentation Podcast

New episode released today! Listen here.

Can a presentation designer be an integral part of the eLearning content development? This episode Troy, Nolan and Sandy talk with Mike Taylor about all things eLearning and focus on how PowerPoint as an app can be integral to the process and how being a presentation designer can make you a valued part of the process.

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2021-06-12T13:35:12-07:00June 15th, 2021|Resource/Misc|

How Big is This Image?

Looking at an image on a slide, it is not easy to know what the original image size is. Is it HUGE, adding unnecessary file size? Or is it tiny and not going to display well? There is a quick and easy way to figure out original image sizes within in PowerPoint:

On this example slide, the image is on the slide relatively small. But is this its real size?

To visually see the true size of the image, go to the top menu and click the Picture Format tab, then select the “Reset Picture” dropdown, and choose Reset Picture and Size

Once the picture has been reset, it will size to its real size. With this example, the image was MUCH larger than its displayed size (which depending on animation needs, could be okay to keep as is)

If you are “numbers” person, click on any image. Go to the “Size and Properties” tab in the Format Picture settings. Look at the Scale Height and Scale Width percentage. For our example image it shows the small image is displayed at only 40% of its original size. That tells us the image is much bigger, could easily fill the slide at its native 100% size – or it is bigger than needed for the slide and adding to the file size of the presentation.

Just a few tricks of where to look, or what to do, to know if the image on a slide is what you need as far as its file size.

Jake @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2021-06-14T11:38:09-07:00June 14th, 2021|PowerPoint|