Image Based Presentations With PowerPoints PhotoAlbum Command

Whether you are communicating with an audience, your colleagues at work or a group of clients or potential clients, a PowerPoint presentation is a great way of getting you message across. But did you know, you can base a PowerPoint presentation around a group of images and, what’s even better, PowerPoint will create the presentation for you.

This technique works best where the images are closely related to the core theme of the presentation, for example, if you are introducing a new product range and you have just loaded a bunch of product images onto your computer.

To get started you need to bring up the New Presentation task pane. To do this, choose File – New. Next, click on “Photo Album” in the New Presentation task pane window.

When the Photo Album window appears, you begin identifying the images you want included in the presentation. You can click on the button marked File/Disk to browse for the images or you can import them straight from your digital camera or scanner.

The Photo Album window is very versatile. Once, you have imported your pictures, it allows you to reorder them by selecting and image and clicking on the up and down arrows. If you change your mind and decide to delete an image, no problem. Just click on the name of the image then click the Remove button.

Having got your images in the right order, you can turn your attention to the tonal values in each image. If any of them needs adjustments, you can do one of four operations by clicking the appropriate icon: increase contrast, lower contrast, increase brightness, lower brightness. There are two further icons which allow you to rotate the image clockwise or anti-clockwise.

However important a part your images will play in the presentation, every presentation will need some text. The Picture Layout drop-down menu lets you specify whether you want one, two or four images with a title. (You can omit the title, though it is unlikely you will wan to do so.) You can also place the title above or below the image.

Next, there is the shape of the image. In the drop-down menu labelled Frame Shape, you can choose rounded rectangle, bevelled, oval, corner tabs, square tabs and plaque tabs. If you don’t want anything fancy, just leave the shape set to the default value of rectangle.

That’s pretty much it. Click OK to exit the Photo Album dialogue box and PowerPoint will go ahead and create your presentation using the images and parameters you just specified. Add some text into the title box on each slide and your presentation is good to go!