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
As a quick followup to the last post (which was getting fairly long), here is the final image, saved as .svg and opened in Adobe Illustrator. You can see the number of vector points created:
And if we look up close we see that there are no extraneous vector points on the text (this is good):
I converted it to a .wmf – in Illustrator go to FILE >> EXPORT >> select .WMF from the drop-down menu. The file works create in PowerPoint and can be resized as large as needed without any loss of quality!
You can download the .wmf to test in PowerPoint by clicking here.
Vector Magic.com is the site.
– Troy @ TLC
So I recently discovered a truly amazing online tool – Vector Magic! This web 2.0 app will convert virtually any image to a true vector graphic. It is the result of research by a team at Stanford and I have been really impressed with it!
1. Go to www.vectormagic.com
2. If it is your first time, watch the quick tutorial video
3. Click the BROWSE button and find a image on your computer you want to convert to vector format
4. With the image selected click UPLOAD
5. VectorMagic analyzes the image and makes a recommended setting about the type of image selected. You can change the selection now or later (after seeing render results)
6. Next is the quality setting, which defaults to MEDIUM. Here you can change the setting now or later after seeing the render results.
7. The fewer colors the smaller the image and VectorMagic wants to make small images, so the default is to use a color palette of 12 colors.
8. The image is then analyzed for colors (this is part of the incredible programming!)
9. Based on it analysis you have color options from 1 to 12 colors – select the one that looks to work with your original artwork. Because the TLC Creative logo has lots of subtle colors I selected the full 12 color palette.
10. VectorMagic then renders your image and displays a Before and After image.
11. Again, another great feature (especially for a web-based application) are the 3 preview options. When in single image it shows the vector version and when you click it shows the raster version. There is also a Google Earth style zoom tool on the left.
12. Here is the resulting vector image of the TLC Creative logo. I would say this is on par with some very expensive plug-ins I run for Illustrator.
13. On the right side are TROUBLE SHOOTING options which allow you to change any of the earlier selections.
For my image, the results are impressive but not really usable. So I changed the color palette to use MANY COLORS, which means not be limited to 12.
14. VectorMagic rendered my image again and this time the results are really incredible!
15. I went to the Trouble Shooting section one more time and rendered the TLC Creative logo on HIGH QUALITY vs. the medium setting – WOW!
16. When you have the image you want, there are 3 save options: .eps, .svg, .png
.EPS and .SVG can be converted in a vector application such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw to a .wmf (windows meta file), which is a vector format that PowerPoint recognizes. And .png is not a vector format, but is a format that PowerPoint recognizes.
– Troy @ TLC
There are two types of graphics:
1. Raster, such as .jpg, .bmp, .png
2. Vector, such as .eps, .ai, .emf
Raster images are created in applications such as:
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Corel Paint Shop Pro and Painter
Vector images are created in applications such as:
Adobe Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDRAW, Microsoft Expression, and Flash
The Big Difference: the ability to resize without loss of quality. As example, if an image is going to cover the entire slide it needs to be a fairly large file size (eg. up to 3MB for the 1 image) to have enough resolution if a raster image (.jpg or .png). But a very small vector image (eg. only 20k) can be resized to fill the entire slide and still look perfect.
Here is a raster graphic (.png) resized to be larger
Here is a similiar graphic (.wmf) resized to be larger
There are times when a vector graphic makes sense, can save file size and be of value. But vector graphics are not photos, so they lack shading, semi-transparency and many other visual traits.
– 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
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
Most of December was posts highlighting many of the great graphics tools in PowerPoint 2007. I have been contracted by Eli Journals to do a live 1 hour webinar covering all the new PPT2007 graphic tools and lots of tips-and-tricks. You can check out the details at this page on the AudioSolutionz website here.
– Troy @ TLC