Make an iPad demo inside your PowerPoint presentation.
It happens to me all the time, especially for pharmaceutical clients. The speaker wants to give a demonstration of what a person might see on an iPad screen during a sales call during their speech. Directly displaying or projecting the iPad screen can be difficult for many reasons. Difficulty transferring files to the device, difficulty getting output signal to screen or wi-fi interference are just some of the potential hurdles in this scenario of trying to project iPad content.
The easiest and most reliable method of displaying an iPad demo is to re-create the iPad screen inside PowerPoint and use masks to achieve the look of the iPad’s screen content. The challenge is to create a “swipe” animation to mimic the feel of using an iPad. This demonstration assumes we’re talking about swiping between static pages of iPad content. Animating individual pages to mimic dynamic content on the iPad becomes another question for another blog post.
We’ll be using Windows 7, PowerPoint 2016, Adobe Photoshop CC and Adobe Acrobat DC. I’ll also be using pptXTREME Photoshop Import and Import/Export. pptXTREME’s tools are not necessary but, make the tasks easier and faster to complete. This project can also be completed in the Mac OSX environment, without issue. Unfortunately, OSX users will have to do some of the “heavy lifting” on their own, as pptXTREME tools are currently only available for Windows machines.
The whole process is 4 steps:
2. Set up the Photoshop Layers
4. Animate
1. Gather the images:
I start by assembling all of the pieces of our demo. We’re going to need:
a. An iPad frame
b. A background
c. Content for your iPad demo
I’ve chosen to find the iPad frame by doing a Google image search for images of iPads “labeled for reuse” to avoid any rights management issues and at a size that is larger than our PowerPoint file dimensions.
Our PowerPoint file is set up for 1920px by 1080px screen output. Searching for a “large” sized image should work well and provide the resolution necessary. The background can be a continuation of the PowerPoint file’s theme template, or a new image to compliment the iPad demo. I chose a photo of a Doctor’s office as the background for the demo. The content in this case is a PDF copy of the iPad’s demo screens, a presentation about New Zealand.
The final task before we move on is to make individual images of our screen “content” PDF and “Export to Image” in Acrobat Pro DC all of your pages of content. You should end up with a folder full of images. I chose PNG file format for this demonstration. You may have different sources like InDesign or another publishing program for your content, the objective here is to have a folder of correctly sized images for your iPad demo content and in a format PowerPoint can utilize.
2. Set up the Photoshop Layers
Once we have our iPad screen, iPad content screens and our background we can set up the Photoshop file and prepare our layers for import into PowerPoint.
Since pptXTREME’s Photoshop Import is in our production flow I’ll create the file size in Photoshop as 1920px x 1080px at 144 dpi. The details are here: FAQ under “Resolution explained – pixels, DPI, inches – What does it all mean?“
Once created I can import the iPad and background file into Photoshop and begin setting up the layers. For the iPad frame layer, we need to remove any extra pixels of color or content outside the iPad screen edges and remove the pixels or mask them from inside the screen area. Our ultimate goal is an image that looks like this:
Next, import, place or paste your background image into Photoshop, make it the bottom layer under the iPad frame. Once imported you want to add the same mask or delete the pixels inside the iPad screen from the background image. This essentially makes a full-screen image with a hole in it, for us to place our content. It should look something like this:
3. Create the PowerPoint
Now to build our PowerPoint file. Our objective is to bring the iPad screen mask into PowerPoint.
By using pptXTREME’s Photoshop Import you can save these elements for future use simply adjusting the background image and re-using the iPad screen mask. “Update from Photoshop” imports and re-centers the mask and you have a new “demo”!
You can export or “save for web” or “Copy merged” or whatever process you prefer to get these layers into PowerPoint. I like the ease and convenience of using pptXTREME Photoshop Import.
a. Insert and center the background layer from Photoshop on a new slide in your presentation. We’ll be bringing it to front once we have the content placed on the slides.
b. Next insert the iPad screen PNGs. You can insert or copy and paste these in utilizing a variety of methods, I prefer using pptXTREME Import/Export’s “insert picture(s)” function. Place all of the images of your content on your slide containing the iPad mask layers from Photoshop.
c. Select all of the PNGs of the iPad screen shots and re-size and center them on the iPad screen mask.
d. Select the iPad screen mask and make sure to bring it to front.
If you are animating more than five iPad content pages I recommend breaking this process up into PowerPoint sections of five iPad screens. Once you’ve made a section of five screens it’s easier to duplicate the section and update the images for following sections.
4. The Animation
To create the “swipe” movement between iPad content screens we’ll
a. Add a fly-in animation to each page of the iPad demo screen shots.
b. Add a fly-out of each screen shot. The animation for flying-in happens WITH the exit animation so they happen at the same time. For example on the click of flying-out the first page the second page flies in. When doing the animation section, I like to animate the entire stack at once. You can save and reapply the animations to all shapes with Effects Library or Edit and then re-order the animations in the animation pane.
Other than making sure the fly-in’s are all in the same direction (from left or from right) I left the animations with their default values for duration and delays.
That’s it!
By utilizing the “insert picture(s)” function from pptXTREME Import/Export we are also able to make updates and edits to these pages quickly and easily. If your source PDF changes you can simply re-export the PNGs into the same folder over-writing the originals and use “Update selected Pictures” or “Update all Pictures in Presentation” and replace all iPad screens at once or as necessary. With Import/Export you also have the ability to right click on the PNG of the iPad page and find the source file path.
Sometimes it’s necessary to fake things in a show or live presentation environment. This demo covered quite a few techniques including masking and layering. We can cover some of these in greater depth at a later date. In the meantime, the final PowerPoint file and Photoshop file are here for you to download and play with. With these elements as a template you’ll have no trouble handling the situation when a presenter needs a show ready and safe method of displaying pages of iPad content.
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