SlideMagic Blog

Finding the right symbolic comparison is often more difficult than making the actual PowerPoint chart. In a series of “chart concepts” I will give some ideas how to represent common business concepts with images. To show that something is torn by 2 opposing forces (for example laptop user mobility and computer security) you could use this iStockPhoto image. After downloading/purchasing, paste it in PowerPoint and stretch it to full screen size and add a few big-font words on each side. Make sure not to distort the original width/height proportions of the image. Disclosure: no commercial interest.

Often, the colors of images do not fit the color scheme of a presentation. One solution to this is to “take out the colors” of the image and replace it with a monochrome overlay with the most important color of your color scheme. As an example I have added some nice blue to my title page picture. How to do it (PowerPoint 2007):

• Select the image
• Click the “format” menu in the top menu bar
• In the “adjust” ribbon, pick the “recolor” drop down
• Pick one of the suggested colors (“light variations” work best), or hard-key a RGB color code from you color schema in the more variations/more colors box

This technique works particularly well with noisy images full of colors, or pages that contain a lot of logos with irregular colors. Not as elaborate as Adobe Photoshop, but sufficient for most situations.

Tracker pages - they originated in the days of the overhead transparencies. You would take the content page of the document (very detailed bullet points), make a number of copies and draw a red arrow with a pen to the left of each menu item. I don’t like tracker pages, it’s a sign that either your presentation is too large, or the structure of your story is so unclear that you need a forced framework to remind the audience how many menu items they still have to sit through. “Pause” slides can help though. With a huge font, you cant put up a question, take a break in your story, build up excitement. What to do with the white space in the background. These type of slides are a great opportunity to insert images that do not fit into the presentation story, but offer great additional background. For example, in a company presentation of a consumer goods manufacturer, I used high-quality, page-covering images of typical Israeli supermarkets, bars, cafes, etc. Put a little white line in the background with subject, time and place. Other ideas (all related to company introduction presentations): close-ups of random employees, office locations that give a sense of the city you are located, etc.

As promised in a previous posting, here a little secret. The Rolls Royce solution to this is the “vanishing point” filter in Adobe Photoshop (see one of many YouTube videos that explain the trick). In PowerPoint you can imitate it as follows.

Create the 2D object in Powerpoint by either

• Combining PowerPoint shapes and text, and group it.Do control-X to cut and and “paste special” as a GIF
• Copying an image (a logo) with a very clear outline and blank out the white surroundings using (after selecting the image): Format, Recolor, Set transparent color (PowerPoint 2007)
• Taking a logo, copy it on a rectangular white box, group, control-X and paste special as a GIF

Now take the image and use the shape “special effects”, “3D rotation” to move the thing in place in the 3D image.

I stumbled across a really useful post on Digital Inspiration addressing this issue here. To keep file sizes down I usually save images to disk before re-importing them in the presentation. Use PowerPoint to extract screenshots:

• CTRL and PRT SCR to make a screenshot
• Open a blank PPT page (or open any graphics software)
• CTRL and V to paste the image in
• Right-click and do “save as” in the desired format

Images can amplify the message of your chart by a factor 10. Use a professional stock image site such as iStockPhoto instead of Google image search:

• It’s legal, you pay copy right
• You can search images precisely with keywords
• You can download very high resolutions

Garr Reynolds created an extensive overview of other image sources.