Helping you with presenting, PowerPoint, and speaking
Microsoft is actively working to make the user interface and features of PowerPoint easier to use. This is good news!
One new feature is the Edit Picture dialog box.
With a selected image, you get to it by clicking the Picture Format tab and then choosing the Edit Picture icon.
However, two of the features in the Edit Picture dialog box have their own icons: Remove Background and Erase.
Here is the full Edit Picture dialog box…
[Read more…]
From my perspective, you can use images on a slide in 3 ways:
How do you decide how to size, place, and format an image on a slide? It depends on your goal, your purpose.
There is no right way to use an image, but understanding these 3 ways will help you design better slides. You’ll learn how to use images purposefully so that they help you reach your goal for your presentations. At the end, I’ll give you a quick exercise that has helped others choose the best way to use an image on any slide.
I’ll describe all three ways of using images and give you examples, but I also want to focus on #3 because I think it is underused. So let’s get started!
By the way, these are all from my course, Power of Storytelling. [Read more…]
You use images in a presentation for 3 reasons:
A common question people ask me is how I choose the best images for my presentations. I’ve come up with a 4-part method, BARE: [Read more…]
According to the Microsoft Office blog, the Office Clip Art gallery is going away.
I’m very upset by this, because I use its photos daily. While much commentary (include a funny riff by Conan on TV) focus on the line art, the text of the blog post makes it clear that photos will also disappear.
When? I don’t know. The blog post makes it sounds as if it’s already gone, but I’m still seeing all of the clip art — both photos and line art. How about you?
Also, the post says, “Customers can still add images to their documents, presentations, and other files that they have saved to their devices.” Maybe the Clip Art gallery will continue on as long as you use an existing presentation. I wonder if you could take an existing presentation, choose File, Save As to make a copy, and still have the Clip Art gallery. I’m checking with Microsoft directly and will let you know what I hear. (Update: Nope. It’s gone.)
The blog post says that you can add images using Bing Image Search. It adds:
Bing Image Search uses a copyright filter based on the Creative Commons licensing system. The results that are returned are images that have been tagged with Creative Commons licenses. A link to the source of the image is provided, which you should use to review the source of the image and the applicable license to determine whether your use will comply with the license.
If you have PowerPoint 2013, try it yourself to verify what I’m saying. Here are the steps:
Here are my reasons: [Read more…]
You’ve probably seen videos which are just a series of photos that zoom in or perhaps move a little. You can create this in MovieMaker or a similar low-end video editor but you can also do it in PowerPoint. It isn’t difficult at all, since you’ll cycle among only a couple of animation and transition effects. You can then output it as a video. It’s great for personal photos, employee photos, event photos, etc. Here’s the video I created from some photos I took at a local park last fall.
So let’s get started creating this video!
