PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Creating PDFs from PNGs in Adobe Acrobat

Creating PDFs from exported PNGs forms the next sequence of our PowerPoint to Secure PDF tutorial series. Before you proceed, make sure that you have the slides exported as PNGs from within PowerPoint. You’ll also need to have Adobe Acrobat Pro installed on your system; and this is a different animal than the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. You can download a trial version of Adobe Acrobat Pro from the Adobe site. At the time of writing, version 9 of Adobe Acrobat Pro was current. If you have a different version of Adobe Acrobat Pro, the process will be still similar.

Learn how to create PDFs from PNGs that we earlier exported from within PowerPoint.

Filed Under: PowerPoint All Versions
Tagged as: Adobe Acrobat, PDF, PNG, PowerPoint 2007, Tutorials

Exporting Graphic File Formats in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows

PowerPoint allows you to save your slides to many graphic file formats, which can later be used in other applications as required. This series of tutorials shows you how to create a new secure PDF with slides exported from PowerPoint. Of course, you can create your PDFs straight from PowerPoint, but that process allows you to copy text and graphics individually from within the PDF. Compared to that process, this tutorial uses flattened slides that don’t have any selectable or editable text. Get started by exporting your slides as individual PNGs from within PowerPoint.

Learn how to export PNGs and other graphic file formats in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2007
Tagged as: PDF, PowerPoint 2007, Tutorials

PowerPlugs Video Backgrounds: The Indezine Review

Imagine a presentation with moving rather than static backgrounds. Will it add even more value? It all depends on many factors. Whether the movement is subtle enough, or just a haphazard jumble of disparate elements and colors. What you use is certainly a decision left to you, but in this review, we are going to show you how these moving backgrounds can be added to PowerPoint presentations with a third-party add-in called PowerPlugs: Video Backgrounds from CrystalGraphics.

Read the Indezine review of PowerPlugs: Video Backgrounds from CrystalGraphics.

Filed Under: Reviews
Tagged as: Add-in, Background, CrystalGraphics, PowerPlugs, PowerPoint, Review, Video

Locating and Sharing the Help URL for a Topic in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows

It’s awesome that PowerPoint 2007’s Help is integrated to Office Help online, and that new articles are added all the time by the PowerPoint Content Publishing Team. However, there are times when you want to share something in PowerPoint Help with a friend or colleague. Here’s a quick tip to show you how you can do that.

Learn how to locate and share the help URL for a topic in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2007
Tagged as: Office Online, PowerPoint 2007, Tutorials

Test Your Color Sense

Here’s a cool site called the Online Color Challenge that ascertains how well you see color, and how much you can differentiate between the various hues of a color as it evolves from one value to another.

In its original form, this site contains four self-contained rows of jumbled-up color chips that you need to drag and place so that each color chip is suitably similar to the ones before and after them.

This example demonstrates how the color chips were rearranged, even though the result is not entirely correct. Figure 1, below, shows the rearranged chips.

Figure 1: Rearranged Color Chips

Figure 2, below, shows the results, with a score of 12, where smaller scores are better than larger ones. Another participant scored 3, while someone else had a score close to 90.

Figure 2: The score

Participants were then asked to provide their age and gender, and the score was compared with others of the same gender within a similar age group. This comparison is shown in Figure 3, below.

This is great fun if you have 10 to 15 minutes to spare. Go here to play.

Filed Under: Color
Tagged as: Accessibility, Color