Microsoft today announced major updates to PowerPoint 2016 for Windows and PowerPoint for Windows Mobile that make it easier to build impressive looking layouts and transitions.
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About the new “Designer” feature, Chris Maloney – the senior program manager for PowerPoint – said that the feature works in such a way that it is like handing out PowerPoint slides of a particular presentation to a graphic designer who can attractively enhance them to wow the audience. Instead of forcing people to look for small changes as you go between slides, you can quickly animate the changes. Microsoft has had a variety of themes in PowerPoint over the years, but Designer is different.
The Designer tool works, in part, thanks to smart image analysis, which uses cloud intelligence to perform said analysis and pick out what parts of the images are most compelling.
There are more than 12,000 layouts, which Microsoft created in conjunction with professional designers. You’ll have to agree to upload your images for processing, but it means you could use this option on different images and your presentation will always look different.
Microsoft explains that these intelligent tools will automatically create slides and presentations. A few of the many blueprints save a lot of time, meaning you don’t have to crop images manually and apply effects, coloring, or change opacity.
Joining Designer is Morph, a tool for producing seamless animations between a presentation’s slides. This is different from the animations already available, in that Morph can animate characters, words, and 3D shapes.
To create the animation, users need to duplicate a slide, then just move objects to the next position you want them in. If there’s a chart that takes up the full size of one slide that is then half the size in the next one, Morph will shrink it to transition between the two.
The new PowerPoint features are rolling out to Office Insiders later this week and will come to Windows Office 365 users by the end of the month. Microsoft is taking a special approach with Office that means these feature will appear cross-platform, too. Machine learning is an ongoing battle for companies like Microsoft and Google, and we’re starting to see the results of how software is really leveraging powerful servers to create individual features.
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Alongside these new tools, Microsoft is also launching an Office Insider program. Coupled with a recommendation feature powered by the cloud, it will allow users to get the maximize efficiency in Office.
