Tuesday, September 05, 2006

PowerPoint Tip - Photo Entrance Loop

Summer is over for most as the kids are back in school and we look forward to the last third of the calendar year. I hope many of you were able to take some time off in the last few months to recharge and rest up. Most people take photos while they are on vacation and with the popularity of digital cameras, the number of photos we take has exploded. We were away for 20 days last month and took almost 2,000 pictures!

With digital pictures being so easy to take and select the best to show others, why not think of using a loop of digital pictures as an entrance show for an upcoming conference presentation you are involved in. Fall is a prime time for conferences and if you are speaking at one or helping prepare someone's presentation, this is a way to make the presentation stand out from the start.

What I mean by a loop is a set of say 10-15 photos that automatically change from one to the next and repeat until you are ready to start your presentation. It is a nice way to set the mood and give people some visuals to look at while they are waiting for the presentation to start. You see it at many high end professional presentations and they spend lots to make it happen - but you don't need to.

Here's how you do it:
1. Create a presentation of your best photos that relate to thetopic you are speaking on or set the mood. If you are a conferenceorganizer it could be of the highlights of the conference so far.
2. Set the slide transitions to nicely fade or dissolve between theslides and set them to automatically advance every 6-8 seconds.
3. Set the presentation to loop continuously
.4. From the first slide in your main presentation, hyperlink to thelooping presentation file.
5. In your session, activate the hyperlink on the first slide andthe looping photos presentation will start and continue until youpress Esc. Then you will be back in your presentation and ready todeliver a great message to your audience which is now better in themood to listen to you.

I adapted this tip from a more detailed explanation of this idea on pages 41-43 of my "Guide to Advanced PowerPoint Techniques" e-book. You can find out more about the book and the other 25 advanced techniques at http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/guidetoadvppt.htm

If you want to learn more about using digital photos in your presentations, you will want to check out my video on this topic at http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/wtphotos.htm

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