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Home | Products | Xara
Xara Xtreme Transparency Effects for PowerPoint
by Geetesh Bajaj,
May 8th 2006
See Also:
Xara X¹ PNG and Alpha Channel Export
for PowerPoint
Although it is the norm to place conventional pictures on PowerPoint
slides, a little experimentation with transparent effects will provide
great looking results. However, it's not too easy to create such
effects in Adobe Photoshop or other image editors unless you are
well versed with the way those programs work.
Surprising, Xara Xtreme--a program that costs less than $90 makes
the whole process so easy that almost anyone can create such effects.
In this tutorial, I will show you how you can add graduated transparency
to an image in Xara Xtreme and export it as a graphic that PowerPoint
can use.
I have used the Xara Xtreme on Windows XP Professional. The PowerPoint
version used is 2003.
You can download a 15 day trial version of
Xara Xtreme from the Xara website...
- Create a new document in Xara Xtreme--choose File | New
and select the size of the document. I chose 1024 by 768 Drawing
(see Figure
1).
Figure 1: Creating a new drawing.
- Choose Utilities | Galleries | Clipart
Gallery or use the shortcut key (Shift + F10)--this will
open
the Clipart Gallery (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Accessing the Clipart Gallery
- If no clipart is visible within the Gallery,
click the Get Clipart... button in the Gallery window to download
some clipart from
the Xara website--you'll need to be connected online for this
to work. You'll find several folders within the Clipart Gallery.
For this tutorial, I opened the Photos folder and dragged the
'Aussie' picture into the Xara Xtreme workspace (see Figure
3).
Figure 3: Drag an image from the Clipart Gallery
Note: You are not limited to using images found in Xara Xtreme's
Clipart Gallery. To insert other images, choose File | Import
and select any of the images which are on your hard disk and and
click Open.
- Close the Clipart Gallery if it is open
to give your more working space.
Resize the image as required
by dragging the corner handles.
Now, select the Transparency
Tool (F6) from
the
tool bar
(see Figure 4).
Figure 4: Drag and create the transparency!
Click and drag on the image from any one direction to the other
as you can see above in Figure 4.
To tweak more transparency options, play with the setting on the
Properties toolbar. Change the Transparency type from Linear to
other options like Circular, Conical, Diamond, etc. to see what
works best for you.
- Now choose File | Export... (or Ctrl + Shift
+ E).
This will summon the the Export File dialog box. Choose a name
and location for your graphic--and choose the PNG option in the
'Save as type' dropdown box. Click the 'Export' button.
- You'll now see the PNG Export Bitmap Options
dialog box (see Figure 5). With all other options unaltered,
select 'True color + Alpha' in the Palette Options tab, from the
drop down list for Color Depth (see screenshot). Xara Xtreme will
now export the drawing with your transparency intact. Save your
document and exit Xara Xtreme.
Figure 5: PNG Export Bitmap Options
- In PowerPoint, create a new presentation
or open an existing one. On a blank slide, just insert the
exported
PNG using the Insert | Picture command--the screenshot below
( Figure 6) shows you how the transparent areas reveal
themselves.
Figure 6: I created this transparent graphic in Xara Xtreme
for my PowerPoint presentation in less than 2 minutes!
- As you can see, Xara Xtreme is so fast to
work with--and it works so well with my PowerPoint design workflow.
Note: I wish to thank Nova Fisher
from Xara for coordinating with me for this tutorial.
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