Science PowerPoint tips and tutorials

Knowing how to work with colors, gradients, shading and reflections in PowerPoint may greatly help create more sophisticated effects for any general or scientific slide presentation. In this article we will show how to match colors, employ color gradients, shading and reflections. It may be helpful if you familiarize yourself with PowerPoint briefly by reading “Setting up your personal workspace“, “Essential drawing tools I“, “Creating customized floating toolbars“, “Essential drawing tools II“, “Drawing pentagon, hexagon and other cyclic structures“, etc.

Color palette. The role of color objects, slide backgrounds and any other graphical enhancements in scientific slides is very simple: they all are supposed to enhance the presented data without causing distraction. Their tone should be subdued and color palette kept to minimum. Proper color matching is one important aspect that is frequently overlooked, and the most common result of poorly selected colors is distraction. There are colors that do not go well together and there are combinations that create pleasing effects. Figure 26 show examples of color palettes that are well matched.

Fig. 26. Matched color schemes, as displayed by ColorSchemer Gallery (http://www.colorschemer.com/). More color palettes may be found at http://www.colorschemer.com/schemes/index.php

Color gradients and shades. Color gradients should be applied carefully with well matched individual colors. Here we show an example of how to create an impression of metallic-looking round objects with simple gradients. Some colors, when matched with gray or black make an impression of shade. To show this effect in a specific context we will use the shape of elongated round rectangle and two basic colors: white and yellow as shown in Figure 27.

Fig. 27. Two elongated round rectangles with single colors before application of shading as described in the text.

Next, using Fill Effects dialog box with selected Gradient tab, we apply horizontal gradient with dark grey or black. As one can see in Figure 28, this could be done by, first, selecting one color option at the Colors top panel and moving the slider toward the dark side almost all the way, and second, selecting horizontal orientation (shading styles) at the bottom panel and gradient distribution (variants) by clicking the lower right option at the bottom right panel.

Fig. 28. Settings in Fill Effects dialog box for achieving silver-like shine.

Check the preview box to see if the changes are as expected. After both objects are processed as described above, the resulting objects, now with metallic polish (silver and copper/gold), should look like that in Figure 29.

Fig. 29. Final look of silver and copper like objects.

Making objects look shiny. More complex strategy needs to be applied in PowerPoint to achieve the objects, for example ovals or circles, having a shiny look. In contrast to more advanced software packages, PowerPoint does not have sophisticated drawing tools. However, a few simple steps will help create effects with adequate results. Figure 30 shows the overall strategy in creating glowing and shining objects. The starting object is a one-color orange oval (A) which is transformed into three different objects (B - D). These are subsequently combined to achieve final look. To clearly see the object C, invisible on white background, the background of this slide was set to dark color.

Fig. 30. Overall strategy of creating shining effects.

Each transformation is performed using tools in Fill Effects dialog box that is activated by clicking Fill Color icon at the bottom of PowerPoint window and selecting Fill Effects. To illustrate all settings required to change object A to object B, Figure 31 shows Fill Effects dialog boxes side-by-side with settings for these objects. Similarly, final settings for objects C & D are shown in Figure 31 C&D.

Fig. 31 A&B. Fill Effects dialog boxes with settings for objects A (left) and B (right).

Note that in Figure 31 C the one color setting was changed to two color setting, color 2 being white, and some transparency (middle panel) was applied. The amount of transparency applied caused the color 1 to completely disappear (Figure 30). To achieve the final results, as shown in Figure 30, objects C and D need to be placed on top of objects E and F, respectively. Make sure that they are brought to front using Bring to Front command. Adjust the position and size of top objects to have the desired effect.

Fig. 31 C&D. Fill Effects dialog boxes with settings for objects C (left) and D (right).

A selection of similar objects drawn using the same general strategy is shown in Figure 32.

Fig. 32. Further sample objects generated with strategy outlined above.

Shadows and reflections. Another way to accentuate objects, and especially text boxes, on the presentation slide is to generate shadows and reflections at the bottom of the object. These effects are illustrated in Figure 33.

Fig. 33. Examples of objects and text boxes with added shadows and reflections.

These effects are generated by adding transparency to the shadow/reflection and compressing the size to imitate the reflection on glass surface.