PowerPoint and Presentation News - Issue 005

Issue 05

The Start of 2001 - This is the first issue of this ezine to be published in 2001 - here's wishing you all a great new year.

We begin by looking at Crystal Graphics' new PowerPoint plug-in - PowerPlugs Headings. The PowerPoint MVP Team has unearthed a few of PowerPoint's lesser known virtues with their Notetaker demonstration. We also examine the advantages of using PowerPoint with Adobe Photoshop - there's a new list of links to Photoshop resources as also a new tutorial on creating reticulated PowerPoint backgrounds in Photoshop. A set of 10 such free backgrounds form the goodies component to accompany this issue of the PowerPoint Ezine. And there's a gratis professional image editor from Serif.

PowerPlugs Headings

Crystal Graphics has announced a new PowerPoint plug-in - PowerPlugs Headings. PowerPlugs is a blanket term for a range of PowerPoint plug-ins from Crystal Graphics. PowerPlugs Headings is the eighth product in this line - a full review is available elsewhere on this site:

PowerPlugs Headings: The Indezine Review

PowerPlugs Headings is a huge repository of pre-rendered PNG files with sophisticated alpha channels. The end result on a PowerPoint presentation is akin to a three dimensional veil.

Crystal Graphics has not posted a trial or sampler version of PowerPlugs Headings at their site as yet. For more information, visit:

PowerPlugs Headings (link no longer exists)

PowerPlugs Headings is also available as a component of the PowerPlugs Combo - a complete range of eight PowerPoint plug-ins with a unified installation procedure.

Photoshop and PowerPoint

Many PowerPoint users also work with Photoshop - Adobe's flagship image editor. Now in it's sixth incarnation, Photoshop is easier and more capable than ever before. To help you learn more about Photoshop including links to techniques, tips, filters, plug-ins, brushes, actions and more, I've put up a Photoshop links page. This follows a style similar to the PowerPoint links page and can be accessed from:

Indezine Photoshop Links

If you have any favourite link to any Photoshop stuff to be included on this page, do mail me here.

There's also a Photoshop tutorial on creating reticulated backgrounds for PowerPoint. This can be found at:

Reticulation Tutorial

Photoshop can be used to create many elements for a PowerPoint presentation - such as backgrounds, info-graphics, navigation bars, headings, pictures, special effects, etc. Adobe's Photoshop page is at:

Notetaker - from the PowerPoint MVP Team

The PowerPoint MVP team have been busy creating Notetaker. Well, what's Notetaker?

Notetaker is a sample PowerPoint presentation which allows you to take down notes in real-time. The descriptions below speak for themselves:

• I've had a number of users ask me for a way to take notes "real time" during a presentation. The "meeting minder" function isn't what they want because the notes disappear as soon as you end the show.
• So I worked out a different (better?) way to do this. I've put together a small PPS to demonstrate how it works.
• It's in the PPS format so that it will run when clicked. On slides 1,2,3 you can click on "Take Notes" at any time.

Further:

• It's an advanced feature and not suited for beginners.
• Imagination and creativity can make it useful for more situations than we can think of.
• We would love to hear from users about how they've used it. They can use the email button on the website below to tell us all about their success.
• It will not work in the Viewer, so it is not suited to a distributed presentation unless all users have PowerPoint installed.

Notetaker is a small download - you can visit the Notetaker page learn more as well as to download a copy of the sample file.

PhotoPlus 5 - Gratis from Serif

This is not Photoshop - although it comes close to Photoshop in a few aspects like editable text, layers, shapes, etc. However, it certainly is the best image editor being given out free!

PhotoPlus is a professional tool - it opens files in many formats, comes with a PDF manual and even handles CMYK. It slices your graphics and has web optimization features which are not second to anything else - you couldn't go wrong downloading this one.

The download is broken into components - the core component includes normal functions. For CMYK support, PSD import and documentation, you'll need to download further patches. And a one-time free registration is required to activate your copy. And did I forget - PhotoPlus 5 works great with PowerPoint.

Reticulated Backgrounds

We mentioned a Photoshop Reticulation tutorial earlier in this issue of the ezine. This month's goodies have been created using techniques illustrated in that tutorial.

These backgrounds are available as a part of PowerPoint design templates which you are invited to download from:

PowerPointed 20m

These are free to use as you please, but read more details in a document which is part of the downloaded archive.

I hope to provide new freebies with every subsequent issue of the PowerPoint Ezine. Do let me know about how you used them - or any other experience you would like to share!

Until Next Time...

If you have any information to share about anything to do with PowerPoint and would like to include it in the next issue of this ezine, mail me here.