To create a simple Art History style PowerPoint 2008 theme, first open a new presentation. The Formatting Palette will appear on the right side; if it does not, click on the “Toolbox” icon from the menu bar. On the Formatting Palette, select Style 4, which is a black background with white text.

To ensure that any subsequent text added to the slide with a text box is formatted correctly (ie, in white font), create a “test” text box by selecting that icon from the menu bar.

Once you have created and tested the text box…

…you’re ready to save the slide theme. Select “Save Theme” from the Formatting Palette.

Select a name for your theme that will be recognizable to you later.

To apply your theme to any future presentation, select the “Slide Themes” tab.

Next, select the “Custom Themes” tab. You will then see your theme saved with the title you assigned. Click on its thumbnail and you’re set!

You can follow the above steps to save other types of Microsoft Office 2008 themes as well. If you have any questions, please contact the VRC.

Art History faculty can checkout a wireless SlimBlade™ Presenter Media Mouse with a Mac laptop. For instructions on how to use the mouse, please click here. A flash tutorial is also available.

The VLC Media Player is an open source multimedia player for various audio and video formats, as well as streaming video and DVDs. Free to download, it works well with both Macs and PCs. The media player includes a Snapshot feature (under the Video menu) which allows you to capture stills from video. Just pause at the suitable frame and take the snapshot. These snapshots may then be used in PowerPoint, Keynote, or OIV presentations.

For more information about the VideoLAN project (including the VLC Media Player), click here.

ArtsConnectEd, a joint project between the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center, launched in Beta on May 4, 2009.

The new ArtsConnectEd is completely redesigned as a dynamic and social Web site that empowers teachers, students, and museum educators in the creation and sharing of content and ideas in the process of learning about art.

The new Art Finder offers an intuitive and powerful interface to the combined collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) and Walker Art Center (WAC), encouraging both wide exploration and in-depth research.  Users can browse over 90,000 works of art, watch and listen to more than 1,000 video and audio records, and read thousands of articles and object labels.  All of these resources can be collected and arranged as interactive presentations for personal or classroom use, which can in turn be published for others to use.  ArtsConnectEd also allows users to enhance their presentations with video and photos from services such as Flickr, YouTube, and the new ArtBabble video site.

If you are sure everything is connected correctly, and you have turned on the laptop only after everything else is connected and turned on, you may need to use a keyboard command to tell the laptop something is connected to its external output port. Below is a fairly comprehensive list of keyboard commands as provided by the manufacturers, compiled by Extron Electronics and edited by United Visual:

http://unitedvisual.com/2tips/2tvp111.asp

• Cinematize and Cinematize Pro
• iMovie (Mac)
  
• QuickTime Pro
• Episode (Mac)
  
• Final Cut Pro (Mac)
• MPEG StreamClip

. . . create a high-quality digital image?

. . . find works of art in the VRC Collection?

. . . export a detail from Luna Insight?

. . . share a group of images in ARTstor?

The VRC can help you with all things related to digital imaging. Contact us to set up an appointment.

We are very pleased to announce that over 95% of the images in the ARTstor Digital Library are now available for download at 1024 pixels on the long side. In response to feedback from our user community, and as a result of the relationships that we have been building with content owners, we are now making available approximately 95% of the images in the Digital Library available for larger download at 1024 pixels on the long side. This new download capacity is part of ARTstor’s ongoing effort to facilitate broad access to digital images for teaching and scholarship. Users will be permitted to download these large JPEG images for use in classroom presentation and for other noncommercial, educational uses in the software environment of their choice. Users can also continue to download images at up to 3200 pixels for offline presentations by using the ARTstor Offline Image Viewer (OIV).