Slide Styles – Applying to Blank Slides

APPLY TO BLANK SLIDE, REASON #1: There’s a small bug in Producer (currently v.4.51.3003) that will likely be fixed soon, but until then, you may be better off in certain cases applying slide styles to blank slides and only after that filling in the empty placeholders. The bug pops up in slide styles where a layer is duplicated and at least one of those duplicated layers sits inside a mask. This setup turns off the automatic behavior of duplicates, forcing you to seek out every duplicate so you can change it manually if you decide to switch the image to another one. But if you apply such a style to a blank slide, then fill in the placeholders, the bug goes away, and as many times as you change your mind about which photo to use, all duplicates will change too.

APPLY TO BLANK SLIDE, REASON #2: When a style involves a series of photos or specific positions for photos, if you want to control who goes where and when, applying the style to a blank slide makes photo timing and positioning a snap. Just select the photos you want in each photo layer. It beats juggling photos.

In most cases, it doesn’t matter which way you do it–add photos and then the style or add the style to a blank–but if you see things aren’t changing automatically as you’d rightfully expect, delete the slide, apply the style to a blank slide, fill the placeholders, and all will be well. As for a multi-photo style, you have complete control when applying it to a blank slide.

How to Break a ProShow Slide Style

Slide style designers have good reason when they set up 2 or more layers where, if you select a new image to go into one of them, all the layers automatically switch to the same image. But what if you want different images, darn it all? The way around this is to break the style. Here’s how:

1. Copy the styled slide.
2. Paste the copy immediately before the styled slide.
3. Select both the copy and the original slide.
4. Right-click the copy.
5. In the resulting menu, choose Slide Options.
6. In Slide Options, you’ll see that you’re focused on the copied slide. Using the drag-and-drop method or the Select method, switch the image to the one you want in whichever layer you prefer a different image.
7. Right-click on the changed layer.
8. In the resulting menu, choose “Copy > Copy to Selected Slides.” (The styled slide was already selected in step 3.)
9. Delete the copied slide.
10. In the styled slide, move the layer you just copied directly above or below the original layer.
11. Delete the original layer.

You might mess up on the first few attempts because layers can be downright confounding, but persevere, and before you know it, you’ll be breaking stuff like a champ.

Crop for Style

Slide styles are usually designed with the assumption that the photo’s main point of interest is close to the center of the photo. It often is, but when it isn’t, important parts of the image can be cut off. In a style where the photo isn’t panned, the adjustments to zoom and position are fairly easy as long as we remember to plug the new settings into each keyframe. However, when the style pans the photo, changing those settings can result in wreckage.
A solution: Go into Layers > Editing, and crop the photo so the point of interest is near the center.

But what about when the style has duplicates of the photo and those duplicates need, of course, to be exact matches?
A solution: Make sure the crop frame has one of its corners coinciding with one of the photo’s corners. Jot down the coordinates you’ve used, and then type in the same coordinates for the duplicate(s), making sure the crop corner sits flush with the same photo corner in each instance. NOTE: Michelle on the Enthusiasts forum has a much better way of dealing with copying the crop to duplicate layers. Just right click on the copy button on the editing tab and select “copy to other layers”. Choose all the different layers that have the duplicate picture.

Being contrary, we humans like choosing photos where there’s just no way the crop corner can coincide with any of the photo’s corners. For example, maybe we want to use a landscape photo in a style built for a portrait photo, and that portrait photo is duplicated.
A solution: Forget ProShow. Crop the photo in your image editor, save it as a copy of the original, and you’re good to go.