Software/Add-Ins Archives - Page 25 of 26

Great “PhotoShop” Shadows Inside PowerPoint

Often you have a nice, well designed slide such as this title slide. It does not really need any images or animation, but it would be nice to give it a bit of depth.

Adding a soft, PhotoShop, drop shadow to the title text helps the slide differentiate itself from the “standard” PowerPoint content and add some depth and appeal.

This effect was created in less than 4 seconds using PPTXtreme‘s SoftShadow add-in. I selected the text box and clicked on the QuickShadow button.

Looking closer you can see the smooth feathered black shadow that was applied to each letter. Something that helps the text float above the background artwork.

– Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-11-17T14:12:17-08:00August 18th, 2006|Software/Add-Ins, Tutorial|

Set Home Page in Internet Explorer FAST

Thanks to Brad Hagen, owner of Video Resources, for showing me this nifty shortcut! On a recent project I was responsible for setting up an event’s internet cafe. Set up a wireless network, configure the dozen computers and set up with custom wallpaper, set the browser homepage, etc.

Here is how to set the browser homepage in three easy steps:

(1) Browse to URL you want to be the home page
Set TLCCreative.com as your homepage!

(2) Click-and-drag the webpage icon in the address bar

and drag on top of the “Home” icon

(3) Click “Yes” to the dialog. Done!

-Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-11-17T14:09:01-08:00August 2nd, 2006|Software/Add-Ins, Tutorial|

Download Office 2007 today (or pay)

In an interesting move, Microsoft will begin charging a $1.50 to download Beta 2 of Office 2007.

“We are thrilled with the incredible excitement around the upcoming 2007 Microsoft Office system as evident by more than 3 million people using the beta 2 since its release two months ago. Having exceeded our beta 2 participation goals by 500%, we have had to make the business decision to implement a cost recovery measure for future downloads of beta 2 beginning 2 August, 2006.” (source: The Register.com)

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-11-17T14:08:40-08:00August 1st, 2006|Software/Add-Ins|

New Ribbon UI Movie

Microsoft’s Jensen Harris recently posted this movie showing how the new Ribbon can be minimized and still used. While not a big fan when I first viewed the ribbon in the pre-beta, there has been A LOT of good work going on at Microsoft and my expectations are looking better! Check this 38 second movie here (or high-bandwidth version here).

-Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-11-17T14:08:12-08:00July 28th, 2006|Software/Add-Ins, Tutorial|

NXPowerlite 2.3 Released

The NXPowerLite guys over in the UK have been hard at work. There is a new update this excellent (and recommended) PowerPoint compression application. For me the install went smooth and in expirimenting with the new features I am even more impressed.
– Batch processing is great. Select 2,3,50 presentations and it will optimize them all in one step!
– The explanation for .jpg compression has been improved and it should eliminate a lot of questions.
– But the feature I like most is that you can keep the original file date/time.

Download the latest from the NXPowerlite website here (a full function trial is offered as well).

-Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-11-17T14:06:18-08:00July 16th, 2006|Software/Add-Ins|

Perspector 3 Update

This week Steve Hards from Perspector sent me an notice that they have released a minor update to its recently released version 3. The update installs on top of existing versions and in addition to fixing some minor bugs, has a huge upgrade to the image quality!

Perspector is a 3D add-in that allows you to convert any object or text on a slide to a true 3D element. It has a great library of 3D template objects which can be easily modified to match your slide.

Check out Perspector and download the update here.

-Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-11-17T13:50:04-08:00June 7th, 2006|Software/Add-Ins|

Xcelsius PowerPoint Ready Samples

PPT MVP, Glenna Shaw, has added some new Xcelsius samples and downloadable “templates” for all to use in their presentations. Even more fun, is that all of the samples are working on her site as web-page items. Play with them and download from here.

If you are unfamiliar with Xcelsius, have some good MS Excel skills, and want to really make charts and graphs POP in a presentation, this is an incredible application to use. Click here to visit the Xcelsius website.

Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-11-17T13:51:29-08:00June 1st, 2006|Software/Add-Ins|

Perspector 3 adds 3D Shapes to PowerPoint

Yesterday I downloaded and installed the latest version of Perspector – version 3, which was released earlier this week. The update (from version 2) went smooth and in experimenting it is easy to see that it now has even even larger library of 3D elements and some really impressive charts. Check out all of the details at the Perspector website!

Glen Miller, has some great tutorials and samples using Perspector. Click here to see some real world samples of Perspector in use.

~ Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-11-17T13:53:02-08:00May 26th, 2006|Software/Add-Ins|

Making Movies SMALL and making them WORK

So the best way to assure (as much as possible) that linked movies play is to create them using a standard Windows Codec and use the most native Windows format (.wmv). The easiest way to accomplish this, reduce the file size and maintain quality is to have the PFCMedia add-in handle inserting and converting the movie.

One of the surprises is how well it optimizes the video files. Take a look at these before and after file sizes. The .mpeg1 files were supplied by client and the **PFC.wmv files created with PFCMedia, almost a 50% file size reduction and no noticeable quality loss during playback!

PFCMedia shrunk my movies by 50%!

Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-09-16T11:42:56-07:00April 14th, 2006|Software/Add-Ins|

NXPowerlite 2.2 Released

Today, NXPowerlite has released version 2.2 of their excellent PowerPoint presentation compression software. Some of the new offerings include:
– Speed and interface enhancements
– If attaching a presentation to an email message with Outlook it can be compressed without opening anything additional
– Now supported in 6 languages (Spanish and Japanese added)

Read all the info here.

– Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-09-16T11:32:57-07:00March 20th, 2006|Software/Add-Ins|