1.6 Presentation graphics

Presentation software package or more popularly known as Presentation graphics is a computer software package that enables users to create highly stylized images for slide shows and reports. Presentation graphics typically includes three major functions: an editor that allows text to be inserted and formatted, a method for inserting and manipulating graphic images and a slide-show system to display the content. With presentation graphic software, it is now quite easy to make last-minute changes to slide show presentations compared to traditional typesetting and paste up. It is also a lot easier to produce a large number of slides in a small amount of time. Anyone with a PC or Macintosh can now create professional-looking presentation graphics. Before the introduction of presentation graphics software, presentation was normally made up of 35 mm slides and even transparencies.

An example of a 35mm slide used in a slide show in the 1990s.

1.6 Presentation graphics

Features of presentation graphics software includes:

- Adding text, graphics, movies, and other objects are positioned on individual pages or "slides".
- Slides can be printed, or (more usually) displayed on-screen and navigated through at the command of the presenter.
- Transitions between slides can be animated in a variety of ways, as can the emergence of elements on a slide itself.
- A library of pre-designed images (clip art) is available and the software has the ability to import graphic images.
- Custom graphics can also be created in other programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator and then imported.

With the growth of digital photography and video, many programs that handle these types of media also include presentation functions for displaying them in a similar "slide show" format. For example, Apple's iPhoto allows groups of digital photos to be displayed in a slide show with options such as selecting transitions, choosing whether or not the show stops at the end or continues to loop, and including music to accompany the photos.

Similar to programming extensions for an operating system or web browser, "add-ons" or plug-in for presentation programs can be used to enhance their capabilities. For example, it would be useful to export a PowerPoint presentation as a Flash animation or PDF document. This would make delivery through removable media or sharing over the Internet easier. Since PDF files are designed to be shared regardless of platform and most web browsers already have the plug-in to view Flash files, these formats would allow presentations to be more widely accessible.

1.6 Presentation graphics

Certain presentation programs also offer an interactive integrated hardware element designed to engage an audience (e.g. audience response systems) or facilitate presentations across different geographical locations (e.g. web conferencing). Other integrated hardware devices ease the job of a live presenter such as laser pointers and interactive whiteboards.

The most commonly known presentation program is Microsoft PowerPoint, although there are alternatives such as OpenOffice.org Impress and Apple's Keynote. Adobe Acrobat is also a (less) popular tool for presentation which can be used to easily link other presentations of whatever kind and by adding the faculty of zooming without loss of accuracy due to vector graphics inherent to PostScript and PDF.

Adobe Persuasion
AppleWorks
Authorstream
Beamer (LaTeX)
Google Docs which now includes presentations
Harvard Graphics
HyperCard
IBM Lotus Freelance Graphics
Apple Keynote
KPresenter