PowerPoint articles

OneNote articles

Recommended Links, Newsgroups, and Newsletters

Get Help directly from Kathy

	Web www.onppt.com

Kai's Power Show Adds High-Quality Effects to Presentations

by Nancy Barnet

You might think presentation software that costs under $20US is suitable only for your kid's school projects or family photo shows, but Kai's Power Show is a slick program that offers some snazzy tools in a surprisingly inexpensive Mac/Windows package from ScanSoft, Inc. Power Show's ability to import PowerPoint presentations gives PowerPoint users a way to add some eye-catching text and transition effects to an existing show.

PowerPoint 3.0, 4.0, 7.0, and 8.0 are supported and, although not stated in the documentation, PP2000 files can be imported too. Keep in mind that PowerPoint slides are imported as JPGs, so any graphics or text will no longer be editable once in Power Show. Before getting to other issues PowerPoint users need to know, let's look at Kai's Power Show on its own.

The Kai's Power Show interface is pleasing, with a soft gray background, gel-like 3D preview windows, dialogs and controls, and colorful "Memory Dots" used to save favorite effects. There are four "rooms" in which to work: the "IN" room is where you collect (import) your images, the "SORT" room handles sequencing of the slide show, the "EDIT" room is where special effects are applied, and the "OUT" room optimizes the show for the desired end product, whether that be for distribution on a remote system, HTML, print, or shows that won't be moved from the source computer.

For those unfamiliar with other Kai graphics products or some of the other software previously distributed by MetaCreations, getting used to the navigation/selection conventions will take a little practice. For instance, color selections for backgrounds and text are made by holding down the left mouse button and moving it around a pop-up palette while the background or text changes color in the preview window. Release the mouse button to accept the selection.

Power Show imports JPG, BMP, TIF, PSD, FPX, TGA, AVI, QuickTime and WAV files and is Twain compatible. It can import a single image or file, or a whole folder of images in a snap. It comes with a selection of backgrounds, text templates and sound fi es. Custom backgrounds will need to be imported into your show as images. Power Show sizes an image to fit the entire slide in a horizontal format. If you want to place an image on a background or place more than one image on a slide, you'll have to use image-editing software to do that. It's an extra step, but not difficult if you design a template to fit the slide format (such as 640x480 pixels).

When you add sound effects in Power Show, you can play a file once on one slide, loop a sound file and play it continuously through a selected series of slides (or until it ends on its own), set a sound to fade before the next sound effect, or run a CD track through part or all of a show. Power Show comes with 100 sound effects, and you can save your own sound files in the "My Audio" sub-folder of the Kai's Power Show group.

Power Show can optimize shows for print, Web and for distribution. The program comes with players for both Macintosh and Windows that you are free to distribute with shows you share with others or play remotely on systems without Power Show installed. Player distribution information for commercial users is available at the ScanSoft Web site. A user's manual is provided on the CD in PDF format. You can also download a copy from the ScanSoft Web site - a handy option for getting an advance feel for the software if you're considering picking up a copy.

Some things in PowerPoint don't translate well (or at all) when imported to Power Show. Text drop shadows done in PowerPoint aren't supported in an import to Power Show. There may be problems with bullet and text/object alignment in imported slides as well as alignment problems where there is more than one image on a slide.

Gradient fills in PowerPoint backgrounds showed noticeable banding once imported into Power Show - even in a two-color gradient that is supposed to be supported. With a few exceptions, PowerPoint template backgrounds imported fine. There were occasional glitches in font properties. PowerPoint date/time text boxes don't import but slide numbers do.

Power Show doesn't have the capability of producing presenter's notes, so any notes in a PowerPoint show will be left behind. There are no precision object alignment tools or rulers in Power Show. And, unless you select from the pre-selected set of colors at the bottom of the color palette, you'll have to copy, paste and edit text from one slide to another to get a perfect match for a "custom" color. Also, there's no exporting the show back to PowerPoint once you've tweaked it in Power Show. You'll need to distribute the show as a Power Show presentation with the Power Show player program.

ScanSoft's Kai's Power Show is a great tool for school projects, art portfolios and photo slide shows'any show that's image-intensive. PowerPoint users can consider Power Show a handy post-PowerPoint production tool to add special effects not available in PowerPoint. It's also another solution to distributing presentations to Mac platforms.

System requirements for running Kai's Power Show (ver. 1.5): Pentium processor, Windows 95/98/NT4 (or Power Mac, System 8.1 or greater), 16mb free RAM, 50mb free hard disk space, CD-ROM drive, 16- or 24-bit video.

The list price for Kai's Power Show is $19.99, but you can find it for a bit less from some vendors. It's available at ScanSoft's web site, www.scansoft.com , and at online or brick-and-mortar software retailers and office supply stores.

Nancy Barnet has never found the "perfect" software package for any task, but finds great adventure in searching. She's a freelance illustrator and writer working in Northern California and can be contacted through her Web site at www.nancybarnet.com .

PowerPointAnswers.com thanks Nancy for her article. It is provided here with her permission and is her sole copyright. For reprint information, contact the website editor.