Back in November 2015, Microsoft introduced two new features in PowerPoint 2016 that made it easier for non-designers to put together great presentations. Microsoft’s user metrics have shown that the simplified design process saved customers a lot of time, given how easy it had become to automate certain tasks.
One of the tools - called Designer - has recently received three upgrades that expand on that great foundation. The first improvement allows you to use more than one image to convey your ideas, so you can now use up to two images for the creation of themes, and up to four images for specific Office and Gallery themes. There are also plans to overcome these limitations in the future.
Speaking of images, the second upgrade adds facial recognition to help Designer identify images of people, so that it can apply an adequate crop and position the faces at the center of the image, for a better resulting layout.
The last upgrade is the addition of a smart color extraction tool, which analyzes the pictures you use in your slides in order to make the right design decisions for you. At this point it can only choose an accent color for your next slide based on the pictures you used in the current slide, and only works with the new Gallery theme - but it will also work with other native themes in a future update.
It’s important to note that Designer is only available in PowerPoint 2016, and requires an internet connection to use, as it is powered by Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure. If you have an Office 365 subscription, you only need to download the latest update and you're good to go.
The PowerPoint team has also mentioned some of the features you can expect in the next update, such as bulleted text, data points, and lists. If you’re looking to test the Insider preview of Office 2016, you should know that there’s a new build that dropped not too long ago.
Source: Office Blogs
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