The visual capabilities of the new Office 2007 are fantastic and when it comes to the mundane chart – the better graphics really help!
PPT2003:
Here I have really worked with the graphic options to create a nice, professional chart.
PPT2007
Here I have the same chart and same data, but with a few clicks I have added some graphic appeal (many of the subtle visual effects are lost in the small image here).
– Troy @ TLC
So here was my task – take this image (a very low quality .jpg)
and turn it into an animated slide to support the speaker’s analogy (“like nuclear fission, it all starts with one, and from your actions more can be created”!).
First was to recreate the nucleus balls as PPT objects. This was done by filling a circle with a gradient fill (shown in PPT2003).
With two versions of the 3D ball, yellow and blue, they were grouped into clusters.
Here is the animation storyboard:
Click the slide below to download the final slide
(note: TLC logo put in place of client logo).
– Troy @ TLC
So sometimes the greatest feature is only great if you know it exists. Recently I showed a very talented designer the Selection Pane in PPT 2007 and she could not believe she did not know of it. So you are in the know, here is what the Selection Pane is and how to open it.
1. Here is my sample slide. Note there are 6 elements (visible) on the slide
2. From the HOME tab, choose the SELECT all the way down on the right
3. In the SELECT drop down choose SELECTION PANE
4. The incredible SELECTION AND VISIBILITY pane will open (next to the animation pane)
This powerful tool will let you turn on or off layers (like photoshop) and let you select a buried element! On this sample note that there are (2) visible items, which are seen in the above sample. But there are also (3) not visible items on this slide.
– Troy @ TLC
So the display monitor for your presentation is not a “standard” resolution and you want don’t want to have black letterbox bars while your presentation is shown. The best option is to adjust the page size of the presentation to a height and width that matches the display size. But what do you adjust the page size too?
If you want to avoid the higher math needed, you can use a free little application created by Austin Myers over at Plays For Certain. The “Calculate PowerPoint Slide Size” does exactly what it says. Input the pixel size of the display, click the calculate button, and it does all the math for you, providing 3 page setup options that guarantee the presentation will fill every one of those pixels.
Just click here to download (11K .zip).
– Troy @ TLC
In a few weeks I am doing a webcast on PPT2007 Visual Effects put on by Eli Research’s AudioSolutionz. Basically I covering the whole range of new graphic tools and options in the 1 hour webcast – so I will be talking fast! Here is a quick screencast of just one topic that I have been making extensive use of lately – reflections:
Click the image to open the screencast (and forgive the poor audio quality). You can check out details about the webinar at this page on the AudioSolutionz website here.
– Troy @ TLC
One of the common requests is to show a website on a slide, or create a mock-up of a website. With this request I first open one of my favorite applications SnagIt.
Then open a blank broswer and use snagit to create a .jpg which can be inserted into the slide. Here is one I like, which I added a drop shadow to for some extra pizzazz.
Then I can capture the needed website or add images to mockup. Here is my slide, note there are 2 images; the browser image and then website image (which I positioned and cropped to fit inside the browser). I can also add the URL with a PPT text box, which makes this clear and easy to read:
– Troy @ TLC
Perspector is a unique PowerPoint add-in that allows you to either new 3D images, text and diagrams or modify existing 2D PPT autoshapes into 3D.
The folks at Perspector have recently released version 4.0 and added some great features. Here are a few examples:
Click here to go to the Perspector website.
– Troy @ TLC
Turns out PowerPoint may be trying to be more helpful than you want. I want to control when, and how many times, an image is compressed. The default setting for PPT 2007 is to compress images every time the file is saved. Here is my example slide, which has just one large image:
With the image selected (1) go to the FORMAT tab, then (2) click the COMPRESS PICTURES option
This brings up the basic dialog box, but we want to go into the OPTIONS
Finally, UNCHECK the automatically compress images option so you can control which images, if any need to be compressed by PowerPoint.
– Troy @ TLC
Why reinvent something that already exists… I am coming to the party later than many, so I thought my first stop would be to point out some already great examples of what can be accomplished with PPT 2007.
Taj at Awesome Backgrounds has a page that showcases many of the great effects that can be achieved with the graphics engine in PPT 2007.
Click here to go to Awesome Backgrounds.
– Troy @ TLC
PowerPoint 2007 has been out for a while now and I have finally caught up with things. Actually I have spent the past months working extensively in it. To be honest, my list of “issues” is really long, but those annoyances almost balance out with my list of praises.
Over the next few weeks I have cued up dozens of examples of the visual effects possible with PPT 2007 as well as many real slides and some tips on maximizing the new capabilities!
– Troy @ TLC