PPT 2002/XP & alpha channels: FIXED YET?!

[Linda Fitzgerald, Carved Image Productions Inc.]

I've read a number of posts about PPT 2002/XP issues with image
transparency/alpha channels and find no consensus or solution. My
crisis involves ONLY importing images with existing alpha channels and
does NOT involve PPT's native functionality to set transparent colors
or saving images from PPT as other file formats. As far I can tell,
this functionality was in effect removed (albeit unintentinally I
assume) from Office 2002/XP — it's not a question of adding or
enhancing functionality.

I've successfully used alpha channels on TIFFs (created w/ Photoshop
v5, v6, vCS/8) imported into Powerpoint 2000 for years with no
problem. Transparencies displayed properly regardless of channel color
(predominantly white, but black or any other color worked equally as
well). When upgrading, I hopscotched over PPT 2002/XP and went right
to PPT 2003 — without event. TIFF transparencies appear as designed in
existing PPT 2000 files or newly created 2003 files. However, several
clients who recently upgraded to PPT 2002/XP began reporting "black
boxes" in place of the transparency in existing PPT 2000 files or new
PPT 2003 files. Other posts have indicated an identical problem for
PNGs (which I never used in PPT 2000 because the import filter
over-darkened the images).

One of my multi-national clients is considering a company-wide upgrade
to Office 2002 which will render unusable literally thousands of
existing presentations if no effective patch becomes available. There
are only a few articles in the MS KB related to this issue and
installing SP2 for Office 2002, as one suggests, has yet to solve the
problem (anyone else have success with SP2?). The fixes and
workarounds suggested in other posts involve complete replacement of
images, individually setting transparencies on images from within PPT,
etc. — not a viable solution for a large organization with 000's of
existing presentation.

I can design around the issue going forward if there is no MS fix in
the works but I'm inclined to encourage my client to upgrade to Office
2003 (or at least PPT 2003). Obviously there are other enterprise-wide
IT issues that they need to consider besides PPT (like
Outlook/Exchange). Does anyone know if MS is working on a fix (besides
upgrading to 2003)? Any ideas?

Thanks for your help!

Linda Fitzgerald
Carved Image Productions Inc.

 

[Geetesh Bajaj]

These problems don't happen all the time - and you could probably suggest
that the client upgrades to PowerPoint 2003 rather than PowerPoint 2002.

Having said that, you could probably upload some of your files on a public
URL and mail me the link - mail to "geetesh @ geetesh . com" and I'll
check how the alpha channels display in PowerPoint 2002 - also, some people
do have problems with fidelity while printing slides with alpha channels
from PowerPoint.


--
Geetesh Bajaj, Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
http://www.indezine.com
http://www.powerpointed.com
The PowerPoint Blog at http://www.indezine.com/blog/



"Linda Fitzgerald, Carved Image Productions Inc."

 

[Troy @ TLC Creative]

PPT tends to like .png images (which also support 24-bit color and
transparency) over .tif images. Another reason to avoid .tif images, is
anyone from a print design background is more likely to create
high-resolution, CMYK images which will cause problems when inserted into a
presentation. Using exclusively .png images since the release of 2002 and
never encountered any problems. At this point the company should upgrade to
2003 (skip over 2002) as it does address some image formatting issues that
occurred in 2002.

--
Best Regards,
Troy Chollar
==============================
"troy at TLCCreative dot com"
TLC Creative Services, inc.
www.tlccreative.com
==============================

"Linda Fitzgerald, Carved Image Productions Inc."

 

[AmyM]

Hi Linda

The problem you are having is caused by how the .tif files are being saved from Photoshop, and how PPT2002 interprets those files. When saving a .tif out of Photoshop, there is an option called "ICC Profile SRGB . . ." (I am on v7.0.1, may be a bit different in CS) If this option is left UNSELECTED, your tif files will import into 2002 fine. If the option is selected, you will get the black box
Unfortunately, this bit of knowledge will not help you with your already existing presentations. There is a gentleman named John Langhans (Microsoft Corp) who visits this board on occasion. Here are his recommendations on communicating your suggestions to Microsoft

If you (or anyone else reading this message) think that PowerPoint should
provide better content management tools for finding, exporting, changing,
replacing, optimizing, deleting, etc. linked, embedded and native content
(without havuing to resort to workarounds VBA or 3rd party add-ins), don't
forget to send your feedback (in YOUR OWN WORDS, please)to Microsoft at

http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.as

As with all product suggestions, it's important that you not just state
your wish but also WHY it is important to you that your product suggestion
be implemented by Microsoft. Microsoft receives thousands of product
suggestions every day and we read each one but, in any given product
development cycle, there are only sufficient resources to address the ones
that are most important to our customers so take the extra time to state
your case as clearly and completely as possible.

IMPORTANT: Each submission should be a single suggestion (not a list of
suggestions

Best Regards
Amy