ARTstor’s Public Offline Image Viewer

This is one piece of presentation software that I have been aware of for a number of years.

• Download free Public OIV from ARTstor’s website.

Pros

• Greater variety of image templates than PowerPoint’s slide layouts.
• Zoomable image templates, only requires user to drag and drop image into the template; supports high quality images.
• Easy shortcuts to use e.g. pressing ‘0’ fits the image to the frame, and pressing ‘9’ shows it at actual size.
• Image palette area, similar to a physical slide light box, you can drag and drop images and view them in a large group.
• Pared down functionality so that it is focused on images.

Cons

• When presenting at a new venue the ARTstor software would need to be installed prior to giving your presentation (this doesn’t take long but is a technical consideration).
• The version I downloaded today was 2.6a (BETA), if you subscribe to ARTstor the version is 3.0. Unfortunately the free version has compatability issues e.g. I couldn’t use it in Windows 7 even in compatability mode, although it would let me run a previous presentation.
• This can’t incorporate moving images.
• Templates are fixed, so you can’t add text boxes in addition to the template options (or this may be a compatability issue I am having).
• It is good that it is streamlined, but then what happens if you want additional functionality such as animations or more complex image editing tools