Comments on: Get a slideshow of your art online

By: Nanci Erskine

Nanci Erskine — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 01:13:32 +0000

Thanks for the nudge about the html pages Tina. I just made my first one to burn onto a CD to send to a consultant, and it really looks sharp. I need to remember to make the file that is the pseudo web page obvious, so that people will immediately know to click on it. But as someone without a personal web page, this is a great tool! I can’t imagine making someone page through a power point or worse yet, open jpeg after jpeg!

By: Tina Mammoser

Tina Mammoser — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 14:44:41 +0000

And I forgot to recommend Open Office, a free PC office suite of software from Sun that is MS compatible. Impress is their presentation component: http://www.openoffice.org/product/impress.html I personally have only used the word processing and spreadsheet components.

By: Alyson B. Stanfield

Alyson B. Stanfield — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 14:05:47 +0000

Also, my husband recommends Apple’s Keynote as an alternative to PowerPoint: http://www.apple.com/iwork/keynote/

By: Alyson B. Stanfield

Alyson B. Stanfield — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 13:54:04 +0000

Tina: I certainly understand your issues with PPT. The program I listed here, however, makes your PPT accessible to everyone because it becomes a Web-based movie. As I said, I did discover that the fonts must be basic fonts as my upload got all wacky on me.

By: Mary Emma Allen

Mary Emma Allen — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 20:58:44 +0000

Thanks for this information, Alyson. And Tina for your comments about your experience. I’m referring my Home Biz Notes readers to your post. I think there are many possibilities in this for them.

By: Tina Mammoser

Tina Mammoser — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 09:55:15 +0000

I hope you don’t mind this reply Alyson – as someone who worked with Powerpoint for years I’d strongly suggest artists look for an alternative. It’s a very bloated programme that takes a lot of space and memory. Not everyone has it on their computer either (or may not have the same fonts as you), so if you are asked to do a presentation be aware that you may either need to use your own computer or be sure the other person has PPT or a Powerpoint viewer (which is free and can be downloaded from the Microsoft website). Depending on the computer an image-laden PPT presentation can run very slowly. An easier and more universal format would be to simply create linked html pages. These would run on any computer, regardless of software installed, and you can hide the toolbars in a browser for something like a presentation. Just remember to save the whole project including your relative image folders. This option also works well for a CD or DVD for sending to galleries if you want a presentation-like file for them to open rather than just folders of images.