Adobe Flash Player Background Updater for Mac is live!

Adobe Flash Player Background Updater for Mac is live! « Stephen Pohl function clearSearch() {document.search_form.s.value = "";} .recentcomments a{display:inline !important;padding:0 !important;margin:0 !important;}adobe.com      Stephen Pohl / Adobe Flash Player Background Updater for Mac is live!by Stephen Pohl  

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PowerPoint 2010: Remove Background

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AppId is over the quota

(Note: We first published this post in 2010, but since then so many of you have looked it up that we thought we'd share it with you again.)

As we noted in the last post about inserting a screenshot, a lot of the work for Office 2010 has been about improving workflow for image insertion and editing.

I’m going to show you how to use the new Remove Background tool on pictures to make a slide like this:

The Remove Background button will isolate the foreground object in an image and remove the background elements. Here’s the original image of my skateboard:

If you click the “Remove Background” button on the Picture Tools Format tab, you’ll enter the Background Removal contextual tab:

You’ll also see that PowerPoint makes an initial guess about what to remove. In many cases this will be the end of the story, so you can just click “Keep Changes” and move on:

                         

This all depends on the characteristics of the picture and which object you are trying to isolate. When the guess is incorrect, there are a couple of quick steps you can take to get the result you want. First, drag the rectangle to fit around the object you want:

Then, click the “Mark Areas to Remove” button and draw lines over the unwanted areas, such as the wood floor. If part of the object you want is under the purple mask, then use the “Mark Areas to Keep” to make sure they aren’t removed accidentally:

In a couple minutes you’ll have just the areas you want, and everything else in the image will become transparent. As a final step, you may wish to use the crop tool to remove transparent areas so that the bounding box fits tightly around the object. Since it’s just a picture, you can apply effects, rotation, and scale just as you would to any other picture in PowerPoint (notice how the shadows project only from the isolated skateboards):

This is a very powerful tool that opens the doors to a whole new realm of creativity. You’ll be pleased to find it in other Office apps such as Word, Excel and Outlook. Have fun.

-Christopher Maloney

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Adobe Flash Player Background Updater for Mac now in Beta!

Adobe Flash Player Background Updater for Mac now in Beta! « Stephen Pohl function clearSearch() {document.search_form.s.value = "";} .recentcomments a{display:inline !important;padding:0 !important;margin:0 !important;}adobe.com      Stephen Pohl / Adobe Flash Player Background Updater for Mac now in Beta!by Stephen Pohl  

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Adobe Touch Twitter Background by Justin Rawcliffe

Justin Rawcliffe got our attention with his submissions to our Adobe Touch Apps Twitter channel, creating his pieces with Adobe Ideas. We got in touch with Justin to chat about his work, and how the apps have changed his workflow. Check out what he had to say, along with his Adobe Ideas masterpiece, currently being featured as our Twitter background, below.

Creative Layer: How have the Adobe Touch Apps changed your creative workflow?

Justin Rawcliffe:  Adobe Ideas has partly replaced my use of pencil and paper. I used to use pencil, paper and ink, then scan and Live Trace with Adobe Illustrator. Now, I just sketch with Adobe Ideas and email the PDF to myself, open with Illustrator. Much quicker and easier.

How much of a difference has direct touch input made to your creations?

Certainly, it saved me lots of paper and ink. I always liked to draw and scan, then Live Trace so it has streamlined the process a lot and enabled me to work quickly and easily anywhere.

Of the different Touch Apps, which is most instrumental to your creative process and why?

I have always been a massive fan of vector artwork. I love the crisp perfect lines, pure color, the control and adjustment that vector artwork allows. So, Adobe Ideas is essential for me.

If you had the opportunity to travel to anywhere in the world with your Touch Apps, where would it be and why? 

Has to be NYC. Times Square, or maybe a Florida beach at sunset.

What are the top three sources you look to for inspiration?

I’m inspired by the work of other artists. I never tire of seeing what other artists are creating. I check regularly various artist networks online, behance.net, Flickr and ffffound.com. I also follow a lot of great artists on Twitter and am always interested in seeing what they are working on. You can find me on Twitter and see my works in progress @Ju5stin.

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Video background help, new stories in PowerPoint presentations (video)

See something unexpected is a good way, your audience hook. When I earlier this month showed this film at a Conference, were muttering of "What is it?" Granted, this is not groundbreaking, but it is enough to for people be different. The cool thing is to do what people with this new type of the result slides.

I am speaking of video backgrounds in PowerPoint. It is a part of the updated photo and video tools in PowerPoint 2010 and see something this year are you more in these blogs about.

Let's break it down. If a template, you can use this, it is in order:

But hang out, it's a video:

I combine the video and write the text and the bottom line is far more convincing.

Download this video template , you can (or find some other video templates) on Office.com. Each template contains detailed instructions for creating and modifying it (such as the amount of time between the individual points). Or you want to give only the text for the presentation (the text is already properly distorted and size for each row), as I here for this short video on the photo and video tools in PowerPoint:

Go read more about video in PowerPoint on Office.com and find an index of articles about the photo tools in Office 2010, including remove background and artistic effects.

--Doug Thomas

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Problems with background images by the PowerPoint 2003 April update? Here is the solution

If you are using PowerPoint 2003, PowerPoint 2003 April 2011 public update installed, and experienced the background problem identified images in the support article relating to our PowerPoint 2003 April 2011 public update, the Microsoft Office sustained engineering team now has a fix for you.

Visit http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2011/04/23/issues-after-installing-powerpoint-2003-update-kb2464588.aspxfor more information about the update.

We wanted to have this problem, but we're just the Messenger. So, if you have any questions, please section on the site let you in the comments above instead of here, so that you can get the fastest answer of the sustained engineering people.

And we apologize if you hit this problem.

--Erik Jensen

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