Thanksgiving 2024 PowerPoint Template
With the U.S. Thanksgiving next week, we at TLC Creative hope everyone has a wonderful time with family. Mike on the TLC Creative presentation design team developed this Thanksgiving themed PowerPoint template, which is free to download and use.
- 16×9 aspect ratio
- Microsoft standard fonts
- PowerPoint standard layouts + a no-text theme layout
- Preset color scheme, text and picture placeholders, font scheme, etc.
Download HERE
Troy @ TLC
The Reluctant Designer’s Field Guide to PowerPoint – A Conversation with Stephy Hogan
In this podcast episode, Troy, Nolan, Sandy, and guest Stephy Hogan delve into the intricacies of where familiar Adobe tools are in PowerPoint. Stephy’s new book, “The Reluctant Designer’s Field Guide to PowerPoint” is now available, and is an amazing resource for both Adobe designers working in PowerPoint, and PowerPoint designers moving to Adobe Creative Suite apps. This episode is a treasure trove of insights and tips, listen now!
Join the conversation through your favorite podcast app, or at the episode 210 webpage that includes the shownotes, links to resources, and photos!
Snagit Panoramic Capture – Even Easier!
Techsmith’s Snagit app is a must-have at TLC Creative. Literally everyone from the design team, to IT manager, to Project Coordinator and Accounting department – everyone has Snagit installed on their computer and uses it daily (note: TLC Creative maintains an Enterprise license for Snagit. It is a great value – and no sponsorship to endorse it!).
One of the go to features is Snagit’s ability to capture documents or webpages that are longer, or wider, than your screen. Start an image capture, scroll as long as needed, and Snagit creates a super long, or super wide, image! For many years the access has been a series of click; expand the task bar, right-click the Snagit icon, go to Presets, and select SCROLLING CAPTURE. (TIP: on my computer setup I added a custom hotkey in the Snagit app and created a button on my Stream Deck to launch that hotkey, making it nearly instantaneous to start a Snagit Panoramic Capture)
TIP: long images, like webpages or apps, are great to use on PowerPoint slides and animate under an image of a computer screen or mobile phone!
TIP: capture extra wide Excel documents using this feature!
Well, Snagit at some point in the past year eliminated the need for something like my Stream Deck hotkey by adding Panoramic Capture as a button directly on its capture bar!
Christie on the TLC Creative design team takes us through how to get this new shortcut. And demonstrates how to use it.
In order to use this new feature, Snagit must be updated to Version 2024.2.4, or higher.
Updated Capture Dialogue Box:
- Capture an image with Snagit by using the PRINT SCREEN button on your keyboard
- A new dialogue box will appear with several capture options
- 1. Image, 2. Video, and the new 3. Panoramic ratio, then info about the pixel size of the capture, reset and close options.
- What we are excited about is the “new” Panoramic Capture button on the Snagit dialog.
TIP: the pixel width and height, and position, of the capture can still be adjusted before the capture type is selected.
- Click the PANORAMIC CAPTURE button and choose to scroll down vertically or horizontally to the right.
- When all of the content is added to the small Snagit capture thumbnail, click DONE.
- Depending on how big the capture is, a progression bar with cute clipart and phrase tells you how things are going for the image to process.
- When processing is complete the Snagit editor opens showing the image.
- Modify the image here (crop, add callouts, merge with other images, etc. – Snagit is powerful and full of useful editing tools).
- Here is my example vertical panoramic capture of the TLC Creative website – as one long image. The capture process took around 25 seconds to create this image – and no needing to manually stitch separate captures together!
Find that Color with Instant Eyedropper
PowerPoint has a wonderful eye dropper tool to update a shape fill, outline, shadow, etc. to any color on the slide. Outside PowerPoint, the TLC Creative team has a small Windows app installed on every computer – Instant Eyedropper.
Instant Eyedropper is a FREE color detection tool. Instant Eyedropper is an installed app, and Windows OS only. To use: click the Instant Eyedropper icon, move the mouse to spotlight the color needed, and click. The color value is added to the clipboard. This color eyedropper is an app that does 1 thing and does it well.
There are numerous supported color formats; RGB, Hex, HTML, HSL, and others. Our team preference is between RGB, like what the eyedropper in Paint and PowerPoint uses, and HTML. To get started, click the icon in the taskbar.
The cursor becomes a target (A), displays the color to be picked up (B), and the color value that will be copied (C).
Click and done, the color value is copied to the clipboard. The cursor then reverts back to a regular cursor. Paste the color value into any project notes or app as needed.
Instant Eyedropper is free to download from their website: http://instant-eyedropper.com/
Top 5 memories of the 2024 Presentation Summit
The 2024 Presentation Summit conference has concluded, with separate in-person and virtual editions. This year marks the end, or as it was labelled, “The Last Hurrah” of the in-person conference, with only a virtual conference scheduled for next year.
Both events were fantastic to attend. And after some reflection, here are 5 of my favorite memories of the conference this year.
1. SUNSETS AND STARGAZING
- Enjoying a venue in California that’s directly on the Pacific Ocean with a sandy beach, palm trees, and the Channel Islands as our view was wonderful. With temperatures in the 70s made for amazing sunset gatherings each night! Having the once in 80,000 years “A3” comet on the horizon just after sunset – and being surrounded by people that figured out how to take long exposure night photos, at just the right location in the sky, so we could really see the comet – was truly cool!
2. TLC CREATIVE WAS THERE
- TLC Creative Services was happily in many places during the conference.
- We sponsored the event t-shirt swag.
- We showed up with “Hello” stickers to accompany the event shirt and many had fun with them.
- We hosted a PowerPoint Microsoft MVP podcast recording (and wine tasting).
- Lori dazzled with a session showcasing real-client work (no NDA content revealed!).
- I presented with a demo for 9 Microsoft PowerPoint add-in tools, showcasing real-world client formatting examples (ironically, 20 years ago I spoke on PowerPoint add-ins for design productivity!)
3. THEN AND NOW
- Conference Director Ric Altman insisted on a session entitled “Then and Now”. And it was, to my surprise, an overflowing room of people! The talk went great, and everyone had a lot of fun looking at the past and comparing it to the present.
4. 45-IN-45 and UNICORN FARTS
- Seemingly non-related session topics, all connected by presentation design, makes every memory of the Presentation Summit conference perfect. Nolan Haims, in a 45-minute session, delivered 45 absolutely amazing PowerPoint formatting tips! And the (in)famous Stephy Hogan took her AI session about creating presentation content to realms never imagined by a conference director (unicorn farts as an energy source)!
5. 22 YEARS
- Finally, as I reflect on my Summit attendee badge with 19 stars, each star representing a Summit I attended, I still believe I should have 21 stars! (Yes, I was technically a guest at a San Diego summit for a half day on my way to Montreal for a client meeting, and I’m still searching for proof of the other star…) Regardless, over the years I’ve enjoyed some fantastic sessions, had amazing offsite dinners with large (10+) and small groups of other presentation people, and in general having the opportunity to be around so many amazing presentation people.
TPP e209 – Live From the Presentation Summit
The 2024 Presentation Summit, held at the picturesque Zachary Dunes Resort in Central California, brought together a vibrant community of PowerPoint presentation
professionals – including 13 (of the 39) Microsoft awarded the title “MVP for Microsoft PowerPoint”. This episode captures the essence of the Presentation Summit conference and showcases the camaraderie, expertise, and innovative insights of the PowerPoint MVPs! Listen in as they discuss AI, presentation design, and many other hot-button presentation topics!
Join the conversation through your favorite podcast app, or at the episode 209 webpage that includes the shownotes, links to pro-and-tech-tips, and photos of the Presentation Summit!
A 2024 Happy Halloween – PowerPoint Animation/Movie
Jake Seelye, part of the TLC Creative Presentation Design Team and Showsite GFX Lead, created this mini Halloween themed PowerPoint movie!
Halloween is a favorite holiday for my family, so I was thrilled to be asked to create a Halloween themed animation using only PowerPoint for this year. One of my favorite memories around this time of year was when my friends and I would go to Knott’s Scary Farm and experience all the haunted houses and mazes.
Click play and turn on sound!
Haunted houses are certainly iconic for this holiday, and this was the inspiration behind this animation. First, I found a fun haunted mansion style stock art, along with some clouds in the background, to setup the main art and focal point of the animation:
PowerPoint’s amazing Morph transition was then used to zoom into the house, keeping the elements of the background as separate graphics to create a subtle “parallax effect.”
The seamless animation that morph provides worked well to give the feeling of walking up to an old creepy house on top of a hill. The screen capture above highlights how thinking “outside the slide” when setting up Morph animations is needed to create cinematic effects.
The next scene was the most complex, as there were many moving parts to create a fun cinematic visual animation. The lightning and simultaneous flashes of the environment here were created using simple PPT animations and graphic editing. The lightning bolts themselves were setup using “Wipe Down” and set to be quick, much like actual lightning. The “lit up” landscape was created by adding in a duplicate background graphic over the top of the house, with the brightness and contrast turned up quite a bit to simulate how lightning lights up the land around it.
A small but fun detail of this scene is the Jack-O-Lantern on the porch, with the “Pulse” animation on the eyes and mouth to make them appear to glow and flicker, set to repeat until the next slide/scene.
Finally, to add to the eerie atmosphere, I added some fall leaves to blow through the scene, using motion paths, and duplicating them while randomizing the timing:
This is a lot of animations and elements on one slide, all for about 8 seconds of actual animation, which really makes you appreciate the real animation artists out there who make full 2-hour animated films.
The final act of the animation features a Witch soaring into the skies above the haunted mansion and creating a “Happy Halloween” visual across the starlit background. The first part of this was achieved with morph once again, as a way to move from the mansion background to the starry sky background, in an upwards motion, and to also move the Witch across the screen as if she was flying.
Almost counterintuitive is the animation pane on this slide is empty, but the slide is full of animation (Morph transition at work).
Finally, the Happy Halloween ending was created using a motion path for the witch, and a “wipe right” animation for the letters, as if the Witch were creating the greeting with her magical broom.
And that’s it! With some time, trial and error, and creative usage of PowerPoint’s animation tools, you can actually create pretty fun movie without ever having to leave PowerPoint!
-Jake