PP HELP

[moneill]

I am new to PP can someone please give some advice.
I been playing arouind with it but i have no idea how to start my pages ????
Help please :)

[Cruiser]

Read through the posts. There is a lot of information in them.

[Marti]

I agree with Cruiser, Moneill. But first, do you have a working knowledge of PowerPoint? Without a working knowledge, it might be difficult to even get started. You pretty much need to be able to create a PP slide. In other words, you probably need to be able to place text and images on the slide, as well as understand some of the basics like creating a shape, filling it in and outlining it. You would also need to know how to insert a photo or an image onto the slide. If this all sounds Greek, then you would need a tutorial on PP (and I think a link has been offered in here somewhere by Annie, I believe).

Anyway, let us know your level of skill. It's also a little easier to reply to a question when it involves a specific function. If the question is very broad, it's hard to know where to begin to answer it. :0)

Looking forward to hearing from you soon!

[moneill]

Marti
Thank you for your response.
Well no I do not have a working knowledge of PP at all, so I think the tutorial should be my fist step. Everything you just mentioned sounds all Greek to me :)

If you happen to run into that tutorial you mentioned please let me know.
Thank you

[Marti]

Okay, Moneill. The following link was provided by Annie to assist in creating a watermark in PP, but I believe the site will also give you a lot of general information on PP as well. I learned PP from my husband who was doing PP slide presentations at work. I watched him create presentation slides one time. After that I just started trying different things, so I'm mainly self-taught, too.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/HA010797741033.aspx

It takes awhile, though. At least it did for me. There are a lot of features to experiment with. But once you feel comfortable with it, then if you have specific questions about a function or procedure, ask away. There are quite a few of us here who are using PP ourselves.

Continued good luck and above all, have fun!
Marti

[Marti]

Here's another link, Moneill, compliments of Cruiser. This one might be helpful also.

http://www.scrapbookpresentations.com/

P.S. Thanks, Cruiser! We can always count on you. :0)

[moneill]

Thank you for the information :)

[moneill]

Marti

I started playing around with it the last two hours, I figured out how to add a background(washout) and inserting pictures as well. I have two questions first, do I have to re-size my pictures before inserting them onto a slide or with they just automatically adjust to the right size.?
My second questions is once I have a background picture in the washout format and I want to lay out multiple pictures on top of that how is that done and how would i change the size and shape of the pictures I am layering on.

I hope I am making sense....for example I am going to use a picture of my wedding dress in the washout style but on top of that I want to add four different pictures of me getting ready and my accessories.

Thanks for your help hope to hear from you soon :)
moneill

[Cruiser]

Hi Moneill, this is Cruiser. I'm not too smart when it comes to PP but since I'm on line, I thought I might answer part of your question. Once you have your background, you can bring in pictures, elements or whatever you want. You can resize them right on your background because when you click on a picture or an element, you will get some resizing handles. You can resize by pulling the corners either in or out and rotate by using the rotate handle at the corner. You can pull in several items or pictures at a time but I find it is easier if I start from the background up. I bring in my main picture, set it where I want it and work on it. Then I start bringing elements one at a time. Nothing adjusts automatically to the right size, you have to do it manually. If you go off the page, move your picture or element around until you find the corner arrows.

To go from item to item to resize or move them, just click on that item. That is why PP is so great. When you are finished, save it as a .jpeg and pull it into Bookmaker. In Bookmaker, you can use the Move tool to see how close you are to the edges. You should be pretty close and not lose any of your picture.

I hope this helps.

[Marti]

Thanks, Cruiser! You answered just the way I would have, but much quicker. I'm sure Moneill appreciated that. When you're working on layouts and books, you want answers right now, so you can continue creating.

Hi Moneill, Cruiser did a great job of answering your questions, but if you have more, don't hesitate. Between she and I, hopefully we can help. She is quick-on-the-draw, so you'll probably hear from her first, which is fine with me. She's usually quite thorough, too, but if I have further thoughts at any time, I'll add them. Hope all is continuing to go well.

[ashley]

Hi, all. Was hoping you could help a "newbie." I have done several photo books from MP and loved them all. Recently, I did one for a trip to Chicago my daughter and I took. I scanned some of the mementos as photos and saved as jpgs- a playbill, American Girl tickets, etc. and I also just did a yearly book. I had made her birthday invitation within a stationery program and again saved it as a jpg. I scanned a ballgame ticket and various other mementos that all were uploaded into the book. I LOVED the finished product.
SO... after my attempt with the "non-photo" images, I decided I would love to create a book of quotes using different colors, fonts, etc. So, once again I created them all within my stationery program, saved them all as 300 dpi jpgs. I started in last night. Everything went great. Opened it to work some more and I was having difficulty uploading more. I already had about 11 pages in.
I am wondering if what you all are doing within the PP slides could help me? I am familiar with the program and think after reading some of the posts, Icould create my quotes within that program and save to upload. Do you think that would work? Would I still save as a 300 dpi? Quality/ crispness of the finished product?
ANY help would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance. It is nice to see so many other creative people out there thinking outside of the box, too!

[Cruiser]

Ashley,

One question...do you have to save all your pages within the stationary program or can you save them one by one in a directory on your hard drive. As long as each is saved as a JPEG in a directory, you can bring them in one by one to MP. Stay with something you are familiar with if you can. PP is a good program but I can't help you with it since I do all my work in Photoshop.

300 dpi is good for text. You need to test one of your pictures in the software to see if you need to do any changes such as margins, etc. Also, print out on your printer one of your pages and see how it looks. If you have photo paper, that is even better. That will give you an idea of how it will look in the book.

[Marti]

Hi Ashley!

It sounds like you've made some lovely books and the quotes book is a great idea, too! I guess I'm not too sure why you're having difficulty uploading more quotes from your stationery program into MP. The number of pages shouldn't have anything to do with it. Without knowing exactly why your images won't upload, though, it's hard to say whether PP would help you or not. But you could certainly try.

I will say that I have had a bit of a quality/crispness issue with my PP text in MP from time to time. It has never bothered me, but if quotes are the central theme of your book, I would think you would want each one to be particularly crisp and clear. Perhaps you could explain in more detail what is preventing the upload. Maybe MyPublisher can help with that. I hesitate to recommend switching to PP when you've been so pleased with the results of your stationery program.

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Marti

[ashley]

Thanks for your suggestions, guys! Yes, I can save them to my hard drive independently from my stationery program. That is what was so strange about what was happening. The only thing I can figure out is that I attributed my problem to my "stationery program" when in fact it may have been an issue with the size file I was saving it as and then trying to upload. Once I got past about 10 files, BookMaker seemed to lock up on the "loading" function during the "get photos" step. Maybe b/c I started overloading the memory? I originally saved them all as 600 dpi, and then after reading some info on the MP site, resaved them as 300 dpi. That seemed to solve some of the problem.

For some reason, after reading MP help pages early in the process I thought I remember seeing something about not using other applications to then plug into MP. Now, I can't find what I read!! I must have read it incorrectly.

I knew you all would be a big help- seems as though you have found a way around some of the limits MP has currently. Love the program, but do wish I had greater flexibility with fonts, font sizes, colors, layouts, borders, etc. Sounds like you guys have my answer!! I stumbled upon this forum several months ago and have really enjoyed your tips to everyone. It is so kind of you to use your knowledge to help others find their way!

Thank you!
Ashley

[Marti]

If the uploads are too large, it can lock MP, I believe. Cruiser may have more information on that. I also believe that MP converts any image larger than 300 dpi to 300 dpi anyway, so it's not necessary to save in the higher settings. I'm sure when Cruiser reads this, she'll give you statistics.

I think those of us who are using MP a lot are anxious to see more flexibility and diversity of styles and themes in the program. But I have every confidence that over time all of that will come. Some recent upgrades were just added that expanded the options already. In the meantime, I look at MP as my base and I build up from it. It's fun to experiment and try new things that work well in a book, and many of my ideas have come directly from comments made on this forum. It's a wonderful resource.

Take care,
Marti

[Cruiser]

As I recall from reading one of mypublisher's posts, the software reduces all files to 180 dpi. I use 200 dpi so I can get a file big enough. Do you know the size of your file? How many mb? The Bookmaker software works best if you use between 2 mb to 5 mb per picture. Try bringing just a couple in at a time to see what that does. Make a page then bring it in. You can always rearrange them later.

[ashley]

Thanks for your help- MP had some suggestions, too, but it still hasn't completely cleared up the problem. I think it may be just because they are fonts (like graphics would be, I guess) and they are a tad pixilated (not sure that is a word :o)).

I appreciate the time you have taken to help.

Ashley

[rasmattaz]

I am pretty knowledgable about Power Point and made a beautiful slide, but when I saved it as a JPEG and inserted it into the bookmaker, it gave me the red box for too low resolution. I started out with large pictures, so even though I had to resize them to fit on the slide, it seemed they should still be high resolution. Any ideas? Thanks!