Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2010 review

Today's blog is a quick review of the new features in PowerPoint 2010. PowerPoint 2007 brought numerous significant improvements, however this new version brings many new valuable features making it a stand-out upgrade. Read on to see what's new.

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First impressions

Upon opening, you may be suprised to find the new version looks practically the same with a different colour scheme, however there are plenty of new goodies available just below the surface

Background Removal Tool

Those who have attended PowerPoint Basics will be aware of the Set Transparent Colour tool which is excellent for company logos but not effective on photographs. Microsoft have attempted to improve on this by introducing the Background Removeal Tool which, while not perfect, does a good job of balancing effectiveness with ease-of-use.

First of all, you need a photograph with a reasonably clear definition between the object to be kept and the background, such as the one below.

Turning on the Background Removal Tool allows PowerPoint to attempt knocking out the background on its own which is not a usable result unless there is a clear distinction between object and background as shown below.

The Background Removal Tool contains buttons which allow you to specify the areas to keep and the areas to remove. These tools are quite easy to use, producing a more usable result below.

The knocked out areas of the photo are transparent so backgrounds, graphics and text can be placed behind or in front of the photo as required.

An excellent result from just a few seconds of work.

Save as video

PowerPoint now contains a video encoder allowing you to save your presentations as a video.

A great way to produce videos and uploading your presentations to YouTube.

Video editing and formatting

Working with videos in your PowerPoint presentations used to be a nightmare and while PowerPoint 2010 isn't perfect or fool-proof for embedded videos, it is certainly a massive improvement. PowerPoint 2010 allows you to edit the video you are inserting into the presentation (so you can show the specific section of the video you wish your audience to see) and even allows you to apply effects onto the video - and when I say effects, I don't mean "black and white" or "sepia tone", but practically every effect you can currently apply to images in version 2007. That means 3D rotation, frames, brightness and filters - it is very impressive.

Sections

PowerPoint 2010 now includes the often-requested feature of true sections. While basic users will not find this feature useful, many power-users will enjoy the flexibility and level control of sections in PowerPoint 2010.

Equasion editor

The equasion editor from Word 2007 has now been incorporated into PowerPoint 2010 - very handy for engineering businesses and high-level statistical presentations.

Should I upgrade?

While the visual difference between PowerPoint 2007 to 2010 is not the massive jump that version 2003 to 2007 was, it is still a substantial improvement. If the quality of your PowerPoint presentations is important to you and your business, or you believe your competitors will be upgrading (and they probably will), then you should upgrade to PowerPoint 2010 to ensure your presentations are as impressive as your competition's presentations likely are.

There are more new features in PowerPoint 2010, however these are the most important and most notable new features. Many other impressive presentation programs are out there however Microsoft has hit a good combination of advanced features and ease-of-use with this latest release, it is a worthwhile program to have.

Nicholas Jankovic
T7 Training Systems

Monday, 16th August 2010

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