Tweet Working with pictures in PowerPoint 2010

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 has quite rich picture tools. If used effectively, it's none less than a professional image editing software like Photo-shop. Apart from regular features of image editing like cropping, adjustment of brightness, picture effects, PowerPoint 2010 also offers some advance features like Artistic effects, Background removal and picture layouts.

Artistic effects

With PowerPoint 2010, you can apply different artistic effects to your pictures to make them look more like a sketch, drawing, or painting so that they blend well with the theme of your presentation. Some of the new effects include Pencil Sketch, Line Drawing, Chalk Sketch, Watercolor Sponge, Mosiac Bubbles, Glass, Cement, Pastels Smooth, Plastic Wrap,
Glow Edges, Photocopy, and Paint Strokes. Select an  image and click Artistic effects button on Pictures Tool menu. Just move the mouse over the effects and click when you find one fit for your presentation.




Background removal

PowerPoint 2010 also offers a cool new 'Background removal tool' which makes image editing quite a fun. As per Microsoft "Unlike similar tools, the Office Background Removal tool doesn’t just select color ranges or trim to a border you draw. Read more>>

Picture layout

Love creating storyboards or comic series in a PowerPoint? If your answer
is yes then Picture Layout is the perfect tool for you.                                                                             
There are different type of SmartArt graphics layout where you can tell your story with pictures. There are also other new SmartArt graphic layouts. Even better, if you have pictures on your slide you can quickly convert them to a SmartArt graphic, just like you can do with text.

Using this layout to create a SmartArt graphic is simple:

 Insert the SmartArt graphic picture layout.
Add your photograph(s).
Write descriptive text.


Try out image editing capabilities of PowerPoint 2010 and you will find that you no more need to leave PowerPoint to get that perfect picture.

Tweet Brainshark announces PowerPoint to video

Brainshark, the on-demand presentations service and content marketplace has announced “Brainshark for YouTube” – a new capability enabling users to easily share their Brainshark presentations as YouTube videos for free. This functionality is available to Brainshark’s enterprise customers, as well as users of the free myBrainshark.com site. Brainshark for YouTube allows users – with only a PowerPoint deck and phone in hand – to immediately create high-impact business content that’s ready to post on YouTube.

After authorSTREAM, Brainshark is the second presentation sharing platform to offer online PowerPoint to YouTube functionality for free.

Here is a sample PowerPoint video on YouTube.

Tweet PowerPoint 2011 for MAC

After Robert Gaskins conceived the idea of PowerPoint in 90's, there is no looking back for PowerPoint software. As of today, Microsoft  PowerPoint is one of the most popular presentation tool with more than 500 million users worldwide. Microsoft PowerPoint has an estimated 95% share of the presentation market.

The first version of PowerPoint was created only for MAC users which later got more popular among PC users as compared to MAC. Since then Microsoft has been continuously adding new features every now and then. Latest game changing offering from Microsoft is PowerPoint 2010. PowerPoint 2010 came loaded with features like PowerPoint to video, advanced image editing, co-authoring, broadcasting and web apps to name  a few.

Now it's the turn of MAC users. Microsoft will be releasing PowerPoint 2011 for MAC by the year end. PowerPoint 2011 too has lots of new features like co-authoring, web apps and cool new MAC Ribbon.

Here are few videos which will give you more insight into PowerPoint 2011 for MAC.