Quick set of colour changes if necessary?

[Trevor]

Hi

Several times now I have had the unfortunate experience of arriving in a
room with a PPT and finding that the lighting, or the projector, or
whatever, means that my carefully chosen set of text colours are either
indistinguishable or unreadable.

I have found a piece of VBA script that purports to be able to search and
replace every text of colour R1G1B1 with colour R2G2B2 - which is a last
resort I suppose. But I am wondering if there is any way of tagging or
stylesheeting my types of text in advance so that I only have to change the
palette colours once in order to fix up the entire presentation (as per text
styles in Word, e.g.)

Can anyone help?

Thanks
Trevor

 

[Chirag]

The closest equivalent are Color Schemes available in PowerPoint. Select
"Format" | "Slide Color Scheme..." menu item in PowerPoint to see the colors
present in Color Scheme.

- Chirag

PowerShow - View multiple shows simultaneously
http://officeone.mvps.org/powershow/powershow.html

 

[Trevor]

Hmm. Thanks.

I tried that, but... a typical presentation of mine consists of blocks of
text with words highlighted in various ways - different foreground or
background colours, and/or overlaid circles, blocks and lines. The slide
design -> colour scheme isn't at all useful :-(

Trevor

 

[Geetesh Bajaj]

Trevor, you'll have to look at Color Schemes as Chirag suggested - create a
bank of color schemes for all possibilities and store these special schemes
within the presentation. In fact, if you can get to the venue a little
before the presentation, experiment a little with color schemes using the
projected screen as a reference. Create multiple color schemes and build up
a bank of such schemes.

Thereafter just change the color scheme - here's an amazing Color Schemes
tutorial by Echo Swinford:

Color Schemes - http://snipurl.com/colorschemes

You can later inject all your color schemes into any presentation using this
free PowerPoint add-in from Shyam Pillai:

Color Scheme Manager - http://snipurl.com/colorsm

Using the above tool, color schemes can be saved as exported files that you
can share between users and systems.

If this does not resolve your problem, do get back and we'll try other
options.

--
Geetesh Bajaj, Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
PowerPoint Notes: http://www.indezine.com/notes
Free Templates:
http://www.indezine.com/powerpoint/templates/freetemplates.html

Technical Specialist, PowerPoint Live
http://www.powerpointlive.com

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Hi

Several times now I have had the unfortunate experience of arriving in a
room with a PPT and finding that the lighting, or the projector, or
whatever, means that my carefully chosen set of text colours are either
indistinguishable or unreadable.

I have found a piece of VBA script that purports to be able to search and
replace every text of colour R1G1B1 with colour R2G2B2 - which is a last
resort I suppose. But I am wondering if there is any way of tagging or
stylesheeting my types of text in advance so that I only have to change the
palette colours once in order to fix up the entire presentation (as per text
styles in Word, e.g.)

Gretag-Macbeth have a gadget and software to go with it called i-One or Eye-One
... it lets you generate color profiles for the specific projector, screen and
roomlighting you find yourself in, then correct the presentation to that
profile automatically. But I suspect you're after something a bit different
... not so much adjusting the colors to fit as radically changing them.

You might want to have a look at our ShapeStyles addin demo at
http://www.pptools.com (have a look at http://shapestyles.pptools.com as well
... it gives more detail about a new version that's due out very shortly; if
you're interested, give me an e-yell at steve atsign pptools dot com)

It lets you set up and use styles much like those in Word. There's an option
to make the styles "sticky" meaning that if you change the style later, you can
have ShapeStyles go through your whole presentation and reapply the new style
formatting to shapes that have the style applied already.



--
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================
Featured Presenter, PowerPoint Live 2004
October 10-13, San Diego, CA www.PowerPointLive.com
================================================

 

[Trevor]

Thank you everyone for your suggestions.

The VBA macro works well for text colours, but I'll have to read some
manuals to figure out how to pick up lines and boxes as well - although I
suspect this method is only going to prove useful if I have a lot of time
available to edit the macro and rerun for all the colours. That isn't always
the case

i-One sounds like a good tool - because really my need *has* been to tinker
with a basic colour scheme so that it is distinct enough (and "enough" is a
volatile function that is obviously more sensitive to the conditions than I
originally suspected). But it may be a bit excessive for my circumstances.

I'll try and use the slide design/custom colours approach for designing
future presentations and see how it goes. At least now I know that if I put
the main colours I use into the basic palette instead of using the secondary
one I *can* do global changes with one operation. I had no idea of this!

Thanks again
Trevor

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

i-One sounds like a good tool - because really my need *has* been to tinker

with a basic colour scheme so that it is distinct enough (and "enough" is a
volatile function that is obviously more sensitive to the conditions than I
originally suspected). But it may be a bit excessive for my circumstances.

Or not enough. It works with every color in the presentation, including those
in pictures and such, things that you ordinarily can't reach from VBA. But it
doesn't really do the color swapping you'd do with a scheme - it's more a
matter of adjusting the colors so that they look closer to normal when
projected; obviously there's a limit to how much you can compensate, though.

There's also the cost aspect. The software itself is free ... when you
purchase the hardware. <g>

But do have a look at ShapeStyles. It might be exactly what you're after.

--
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================
Featured Presenter, PowerPoint Live 2004
October 10-13, San Diego, CA www.PowerPointLive.com
================================================