Why do you need to flatten your images and what exactly does it mean?
In the blog on clip art we discussed the importance of reading the terms of use (TOU) written by each clip artist. The reason that we need to flatten their images is so that they cannot be ‘lifted’ out of products and obtained without paying from the original author. Saving your Power Point as a PDF file, does not flatten them…..there is plenty of software around that makes it easy to lift images from them.
There is a product that has been designed by an Australian Developer (Bearwood Labs) who has created a tool which will do this for you click on this link to find out more. It is not the cheapest resource; however, it is a wonderful tool.
- Once you have finished your product, make sure you save your work as a PowerPoint. Then, you are going to want to save your work again and change the Save As Type to a PNG or a JPEG file.
- A window pops up and asks if you want to save all of your slides or just your current slide. I always select every slide. Once you do that, you will receive a confirmation message. Make sure you are saving them to a place you can find them! (Usually the desktop) Then click Save. (they will save to a folder in the place you designated).
- You will then create a new PowerPoint presentation. Format the slides to match your original product then right click and select format background from the pop-up menu.
- A screen will come up and you will first select Picture or Texture fill and then select insert from file. Then go and find the images that you saved and select the first one.
- Magically, your image will now be the background! No clip art can be “lifted” from the product now! You will have to go through this process for all of the slides. Once you learn the routine, it doesn’t take much time at all to get the hang of it!