I hinted at this great design trick in the previous post. Let me walk through process in more detail. The goal is to quickly (within minutes of receiving a folder of images) build a slideshow of full frame images, that are cropped and centered, can run as a photo loop.
Step 1: Use a native PowerPoint add-in (that has been hidden in the app for literally years and years). Go to INSERT > PHOTO ALBUM drop down > NEW PHOTO ALBUM
Step 2: Select FILE/DISK > navigate to folder of images > select your images > CREATE
This will create a NEW document with a title page as page 1. Delete page 1.
Then go to the BrightSlide tab > BATCH > and resize all images.
Step 3: Select all slide > apply a slide transition of your choice (FADE is a safe and professional default option) > set slides to auto advance after 8 seconds (or speed your feel is best for your meeting)
Step 4: Go to SLIDE SHOW > SET UP SLIDE SHOW > select LOOP UNTIL ESCAPE.
Done! A looping photo slide show built in just a few minutes!
A few more details on the BrightSlide resize image feature. First, it is wonderful! Second, it was added into Brightslide within days of detailing what I thought would be a great add-in tool for many presentation designers (thank you Jamie Garroch and BrightCarbon development team!). What this add-in is doing is scaling each image to fill the slide, adding a crop so the image remains the size of the slide, and centering the image within the crop.
As a final step, which is optional, I run NXPowerlite to resave the images to their crop at an optimized 1920×1080 for an easy to manage file size (because generally I am receiving the images from a professional photographer, and while the images look great, they are huge file sizes!).
The BrightSlide add-in for PowerPoint can be downloaded for free at: https://www.brightcarbon.com/brightslide/
Troy @ TLC