Review: Prezi makes it easy to create cinematic presentations with zoom and pan effects

Prezi Prezi is fun to use, and the presentations you can make with it are fun to watch.

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Traditional slide-based presentations are just that: Traditional. You could have fantastic visuals, but no matter how fancy (or austerely minimalistic) each slide is, it remains a slide. Prezi (various prices, starting at free) tries to change this by turning your presentation into a wide-open canvas on which you can draw your ideas spatially, and then presenting them by zooming and panning all over the canvas. Used well, the end result feels cinematic and engaging in a way traditional presentations rarely are.

Prezi offers over 50 templates to get you started.

To get you started, Prezi shows a list of templates you could use. There are an ample number of templates, but there is no way to preview what a template looks like except by starting a project with it. If you start a project with a template and find out it doesn't work for you after all, you can switch over to a different template midway through, but you will have to adjust things to work in the new template.

Prezi uses a canvas, but makes it easy to see how a presentation flows.

Prezi's canvas-based nature means that you create the presentation where you'll be showing it. If you want to zoom and pan somewhere when presenting, you'll have to zoom and pan while editing, so you instantly get a feel for what your audience will see. Instead of "slides," Prezi uses "path points": saved states for your presentation, where the viewport shows a portion of the canvas.

It is easy to insert images using a built-in Google Images search, or from your local computer.

As you present, you move through a progression of these path points, with Prezi automatically animating things as needed. If a given path point covers a small area of the canvas, Prezi will smoothly zoom into it, revealing new details as needed. If the next path point is all the way across the canvas, Prezi will smoothly pan there.

Prezi offers built-in diagrams.

I found Prezi easy and intuitive to work with, without much of a learning curve. When I had to insert an image, it let me search Google Images right from within Prezi, and I could tell it to only look for images that are okay to use commercially. You can also embed YouTube videos, as well as content from your local computer. A recent Prezi feature is the addition of sound: You can now upload sound clips to go along with your presentation, or even narrate the entire presentation so that it can stand on its own.

Instead of slides, your presentation flows along path points, which you can change and edit as needed.

Internet connections have a tendency to flake out at just the wrong moment, especially in a busy convention center. To avoid potentially embarrassing situations, Prezi lets you download your presentation for offline viewing. The presentation is packaged as a Zip archive, with a small executable player.

Prezi lets you present to others online.

Prezi is available in three different plans, starting with a free Public plan. I tested the $4.92/month Enjoy plan. The $13.25/month Pro plan is the only one that lets you work offline.

A big part of Prezi's appeal is that it's still unusual. It is likely your audience is used to slide-based presentations, so Prezi's cinematic nature would wow them. In time, if Prezi or similar products become commonplace, it may lose its visual edge. Until that happens, Prezi is an almost surefire way to create an engaging, surprising, and beautiful presentation.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use the latest version of this Web-based software.

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Add Retro Effects to Your Photos With CameraBag

Is it pure nostalgia, or does it say something about the digital camera when we go out of our way to make our digitized snaps look like they were made using a box Brownie, or Instamatic? CameraBag 2 ($29, 30-day free trial) is a fun way to inject a retro feel into your sterile digital snapshots.

The style effects in Camera Bag range from stylish borders to wacky colorization to vintage looks---all fully adjustable.CameraBag 2 uses a very elegant, artful interface to get you started. Simply upload your JPG, PNG, TIFF, or RAW images individually or in a batch; and click on one of more than twenty pre-loaded styles. CameraBag 2 includes everything from self-explanatory Monochrome to the more esoteric Poolside, Hipster, or Lolo. In case the preview thumbnail isn't enough, CameraBag 2 also displays descriptions of each style---for example, Skater is described as "skinned knees and noisy photos." But the captions are just a cute aside: Since the effect does not destroy your original image, try them all until you find what you like.

Unlike FotoSketcher (free) which is a similar program that focuses on turning your photographs into fine art, sketches, cartoons, and watercolors, CameraBag 2 delves into the lost art of film photography. CameraBag 2 even includes borders to make your image look like it's printed on torn paper, or is from a non-digitized era: 47mm, 35mm, Infititi 50, Insta, Vinyl, 75mm Strip, Slide, and Safety Film. For digital scrapbookers, it's the perfect pairing to a program like Serif's CraftArtist ($60), which will take those nostalgic images and allow you to arrange and embellish them.

CameraBag was originally developed as an iPhone app, but don't get confused with Instagram, a free app for mobile Apple (and Android to be released soon) devices that pays homage to the square formats of Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid cameras: This new version of CameraBag works on your desktop or laptop PC and has been rebuilt from the ground up to be a pretty powerful image editor too. Use CameraBag 22 to crop, rotate, and adjust your image. Each change you make shows up as a tile on the panel at the bottom. If you change your mind you can always return to that particular effect and change or delete it. Effects can also be reordered to achieve a different look.

Once you have the basic style you envisioned, you can use CameraBag 2's easy sliders and curves to tweak your image. The simplicity of CameraBag 2's sliders remind me of Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 7 ($90), as does the ease of adjusting brightness, color, contrast, crop, exposure, saturation, tint, and vignettes, to name a few areas. CameraBag 2's tools are all in one place and you can use them to control the way your image looks at a beginner's or advanced level. For example, the Contrast tool includes a Brightness Origin slider that changes the point at which you want to make the pixels lighter or darker. Another great feature is the Straighten tool: Use a slider in CameraBag 2 to rotate your image within a non-rotating frame. No more guessing at degrees of rotation, or cropping to square off the image after you've rotated it.

Unfortunately, in CameraBag 2 you cannot select parts of your image, change individual pixels, or print your images: For that level of detail you'll need something akin to Photoshop ($700). Try Serif PhotoPlus X5 ($90), Xara Photo & Graphic Designer, Paint.NET (free), or GIMP (free)

CameraBag 2 will also save combinations of styles and adjustments as Favorites, allowing you to achieve the same effect multiple times; and also includes a batch process to save you time. And CameraBag 2 really proves it's non-destructive---if you accidentally batch process an image you didn't want to change, or overwrite the original, simply switch the changes off.

CameraBag 2 is very easy to use--the 40-second tutorial is testament to how easy--and fun to create your own style. The image manipulation takes some practice to perfect, but the effects are worth it--especially if your images need perking up with a bit of wistful yearning for less digital times.

--Clare Brandt

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