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Add-ins
Ars Media Photoshop to PowerPoint Plug-in
Reviewed by Geetesh
Bajaj
Introduction
About Ars Media
Download and Installation
Using the Plug-in
Why This Product?
Pricing and Support
Conclusion
Introduction
PowerPoint designers invariably use Adobe Photoshop to create
backgrounds and graphic elements for presentations and templates.
Until now, you could not import Photoshop compositions into PowerPoint
with their layers intact. Nor could Photoshop export an entire
composition in a format that PowerPoint could understand.
So, it's certainly out of the ordinary to see a specialized product
that covers this vacuum. Ars Media creates an Automate plug-in
for Photoshop that exports an entire composition to a PowerPoint
presentation. Let's explore more...
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About Ars Media
Ars Media is a privately owned company, with a background in providing
system integration services to small to medium broadcasting facilities
in the Balkan region.
Vladimir Zecevic, who heads Ars Media was my contact for
this review - thank you, Vladimir.
I asked Vladimir to tell me more about Ars Media and he responded: "...we
have made lots of outsourcing projects for quite famous names in
video industry. Unfortunately most of those projects are under
NDA. However knowing that I have to give some proof of my statement,
I can tell that Scala, one of the companies that drives dynamic
signage market (www.scala.com), use in its flagship InfoChannel
3 product line, 3D and Zoom effects that are cooked in Ars Media
kitchen (actually most of them are made by Ars Media)."
You can learn more at the Ars
Media site...
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Download and Installation
You can download a demo version of the product from the Ars Media
site - the included Photoshop add-in works with version 6, 7 and
CS of Photoshop. Installation is easy and automatically adds the
plug-in to Photoshop.
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Using the Plug-in
- I first created a suitable backdrop in
Photoshop that's intended to be my presentation background
image.
- On new layers, I added several elements - this included a vector
image exported from Microsoft
Expression and several Photoshop shapes with drop shadows
and bevels applied.
- I then exported the entire composition using File | Automate
| Export HTML File... in Photoshop. The plug-in exports the entire
Photoshop composition to a special PowerPoint HTML format that
PowerPoint 2002 and 2003 can open natively.
- You'll be presented with an Export Options dialog box - I chose
JPEG for my background graphic and PNG for everything else. You
could choose TIF as the format of choice for exporting your graphics
but PNG is the only format that the last three versions of Photoshop
(6, 7 and CS) can export and PowerPoint can understand.
- Close Photoshop and open PowerPoint. Create a new presentation
or open an existing one. Choose Insert | Slides From File...
- You'll be presented with the Slide Finder dialog box. Browse
to the HTML file that you exported from Photoshop. Check the
option to keep source formatting and click the Insert All button.
Save your PowerPoint presentation or template.
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Why This Product?
I asked Vladimir about what prompted them to create this product.
Here is his response:
"We have very similar product for Scala market for almost
two years. In very short time it became “must have” tool
for any serious Scala production. Now, many Scala users, and those
that have seen his tool in Scala production, asked from us to make
a similar product for PowerPoint. We may have done it out of curiosity,
but the primary reason was that robustness and flexibility of internal
design of original product allowed quick and clean redesign for
the PowerPoint platform. The same engine that drives PowerPoint
Exporter has been tested on millions of PSD images."
Vladimir adds: "I am willing to bet that this tool will save
for the user who makes one presentation a week, enough time for
a nice vacation once in a year."
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Pricing and Support
For US$49.50, Ars Media's Photoshop to PowerPoint plug-in is a
great buy. It works exactly as it promises and makes easy work
out of creating amazing backgrounds and graphic elements.
About support, Vladimir adds: "All support related enquiries
are handled by people who have written the software. However we
do not consider support as just fixing problems. If someone suggest
improvement or new feature that he would like to see in our product
we are trying to implement that ASAP. If the feature requested
does not completely change the way plug-in work we usually implement
it within weeks."
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Conclusion
I like the product and have no qualms recommending it to those
who need to work with both Photoshop and PowerPoint.
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