MyPage is a personalized page based on your interests.The page is customized to help you to find content that matters you the most.


I'm not curious

ShapeChef for PowerPoint: It's time you leave your default Clipart tool behind

Published on 03 June 14
3053
0
0

What is the first thing that pops into your head when you learn that you are in for a presentation? Me? All I can picture is a few slides of crumpled up lines filled with information, carelessly organized without any real intent of adding some value. That might come off a bit harsh, but that’s the bitter truth about presentations! What most people miss out on while making presentations is that it is not convenient for audience to comprehend what the orator has to say, while at the same time reading endless lines on the screen.


Images are a great complimentary tool for spoken words as far as presentations are concerned. A good speech backed up with great visuals tends to stay on longer with the audience and also not put them to sleep! If you ever have happened to go through Apple’s developers conferences, you could get a clear idea of what’s being talked about here. Charts, statistics, and almost anything presented visually in a presentation tend to stay longer in the minds of your audience.


Coming to the conclusion that images should make the bigger part of presentations, what about the built-in clipart tool of Microsoft PowerPoint? Yes, that tool lacks a sense of organization and variety in that sense. So, here we are reviewing a premium tool to eliminate the need for PowerPoint’s built-in clipart manager again! We’ll be talking about ShapeChef - A powerful clipart tool for Microsoft PowerPoint!


ShapeChef - An intro to the clipart tool


Okay, keeping it short and simple - ShapeChef is a clipart management tool for Microsoft PowerPoint. It is actually a replacement for the default built-in clipart toolbox of Microsoft PowerPoint. This tool packs a punch into your presentations. If you are looking for something to improve on the visual aspects of your PowerPoint presentations and want to kick out the blandness out of your presentations, you should definitely hang around to see what’s this all about!


ShapeChef seems to fairly compensate the shortcomings of Microsoft PowerPoint’s built-in tools for adding the visual treat to your presentations. A search tool, hundreds of downloadable and built-in high quality images, an organizational tool and a cloud service - This might be the best complete package for PowerPoint I have ever come across, given that I prefer visuals in presentations.


Okay, enough talk for now, let’s dive in and see what this piece of software has to offer after all.


First things first - Setting up the software
ShapeChef for PowerPoint: It's time you leave your default Clipart tool behind - Image 1

Okay, now that might have been hyped-up a little bit, as there is not a lot of set-up to do after all! You can head on to the ShapeChef’s official website and download the trial version in an instant. This is paid software, so you could download a 30-day free trial from their official website.


The download comes in at 5.86MB. Once downloaded, you can install it instantly and there is little-to-none interruptions incurred about your trial version expiration! Now that it is installed, you can access this software by simply opening your edition of Microsoft PowerPoint.


Software Compatibility

ShapeChef is an add-on for Microsoft PowerPoint, so you will need that software of course! As far as versions are concerned, it works with all widely used versions of PowerPoint; including PowerPoint 2007 and 2010. It would be good to know that it supports all editions of PowerPoint, starting from the 2003 version to the very recent PowerPoint 2013 for Windows 8. So, you could use it even on your Windows 8 PC.


As far as Operating systems are concerned, it could come out as dismay for Mac users as they currently support only PC’s. So, no Mac versions for now, though you can make the most of this software if you own a PC.


Initial Interface
ShapeChef for PowerPoint: It's time you leave your default Clipart tool behind - Image 2
ShapeChef will be waiting for you on the right-hand side of your PowerPoint window as soon as you open it! As seen above, the tool box takes up a major portion of your PowerPoint window and so no need to worry about finding your newly installed add-on! Although the toolbox looks pretty fine, it could do well by taking up a little less space by default. Not of a major concern, as everything could be resized with pretty ease.

ShapeChef Features Overview


Adding new Shapes
ShapeChef for PowerPoint: It's time you leave your default Clipart tool behind - Image 3

Okay, so for avoiding any further confusion, we’ll be referring to clipart as ‘Shapes’ in this review for convenience sake. Clipart in this software is known as Shapes, and we’ll be using it throughout here. Adding new shapes is a piece of cake with this software. All you need to do is to access the shape that is visible on the selected slide, right-click on it and select ‘Add new Shape’.


So, to add your very own shapes to this clipart manager, you can drag it into your slide, right-click on it and add it to your collection. That’s it! Embedding new shapes into the slide is done by just dragging the visible shape from the toolbar.


Embedding downloadable graphics
ShapeChef for PowerPoint: It's time you leave your default Clipart tool behind - Image 4

ShapeChef also offers you to embed downloadable high quality graphics and visuals at the click of a button. At the bottom of the ShapeChef toolbox, you can clearly see a mark ‘Download more shapes’. All of those downloadable graphics are available from this link. An example of downloadable shapes is seen above. You can select from a wide range of computer network symbols, sketched frames, sketched arrows, global maps, etc from this box.


Some of these downloadable collections are free, while some of them come as in-app purchase.


Clipart Organizing tool

ShapeChef for PowerPoint: It's time you leave your default Clipart tool behind - Image 5

Here comes the best thing about this software - Its organizing tool! ShapeChef packs a very powerful feature of clipart/shapes organizing. This might be the only feature that Microsoft PowerPoint needed to have embodied into its software.


You can organize your shapes from here and group them together into custom relevant categories for easy access later.


Search Toolbar
ShapeChef for PowerPoint: It's time you leave your default Clipart tool behind - Image 6

ShapeChef features a powerful search tool for searching built-in shapes that are ready to embed right into your slides. The search toolbar is quite prominent at the top of your newly installed toolbox. The shapes that will be visible in the search result are ready to embed, so need to download them.


You can search for Maps, graphs, charts, emoticons, etc from this toolbar and drag them right into your slides. As mentioned earlier, you can easily download more graphics from the link at the bottom, if you can’t find what you are looking for over here.

Cloud services: Clipart over the air
ShapeChef for PowerPoint: It's time you leave your default Clipart tool behind - Image 7

The cloud services are the highlight of this software. Consider this feature as clipart over air! You are provided your own account for using their cloud services with the purchase of this software. You can store your collection of clipart over here and can access it any point of time later, from anywhere!


The software offers you to either upload your shapes collection as a private or public collection. Privately shared collection will be accessible to your own use. You can also make your collection public for people to access and use them. Similarly, you can also browse for others’ public collections and use them in your slides.


Pricing

The pricing of this tool depends on whom you intend to use it with. Say, for example, in your office you plan to use it along with a team of five other people, then it would come at a cost of $179.95. The price of a single user license would be $39.99. The price for a team of ten users comes in at $319.90 and the price for a team of fifty users could go as far as $1,399.50.


A single license of this software supports installation on up to two PC’s.

Conclusion - Our Verdict

ShapeChefis a powerful tool that would make up for the lost love for Microsoft PowerPoint clipart tool. This tool would be a great add-on for someone who makes a lot of presentations, as a part of his/her job and improve on the visual aspects of the presentation.


This software is a great supplement to the built-in clipart tool and brings in high quality graphics and imagery to the table. This tool brings a new lease of life to the PowerPoint presentations that are just endless lines of information, which are the least desirable!


Its clipart management and organizing tool are the best in its category and it must be on the check-list of everyone who prefers images to written words as presentation. Make the most of images and engage your audience with this add-on for Microsoft PowerPoint!

Our Rating -4.5 Out of 5


























What is the first thing that pops into your head when you learn that you are in for a presentation? Me? All I can picture is a few slides of crumpled up lines filled with information, carelessly organized without any real intent of adding some value. That might come off a bit harsh, but that’s the bitter truth about presentations! What most people miss out on while making presentations is that it is not convenient for audience to comprehend what the orator has to say, while at the same time reading endless lines on the screen.

Images are a great complimentary tool for spoken words as far as presentations are concerned. A good speech backed up with great visuals tends to stay on longer with the audience and also not put them to sleep! If you ever have happened to go through Apple’s developers conferences, you could get a clear idea of what’s being talked about here. Charts, statistics, and almost anything presented visually in a presentation tend to stay longer in the minds of your audience.

Coming to the conclusion that images should make the bigger part of presentations, what about the built-in clipart tool of Microsoft PowerPoint? Yes, that tool lacks a sense of organization and variety in that sense. So, here we are reviewing a premium tool to eliminate the need for PowerPoint’s built-in clipart manager again! We’ll be talking about ShapeChef - A powerful clipart tool for Microsoft PowerPoint!

ShapeChef - An intro to the clipart tool






Okay, keeping it short and simple - ShapeChef is a clipart management tool for Microsoft PowerPoint. It is actually a replacement for the default built-in clipart toolbox of Microsoft PowerPoint. This tool packs a punch into your presentations. If you are looking for something to improve on the visual aspects of your PowerPoint presentations and want to kick out the blandness out of your presentations, you should definitely hang around to see what’s this all about!

ShapeChef seems to fairly compensate the shortcomings of Microsoft PowerPoint’s built-in tools for adding the visual treat to your presentations. A search tool, hundreds of downloadable and built-in high quality images, an organizational tool and a cloud service - This might be the best complete package for PowerPoint I have ever come across, given that I prefer visuals in presentations.

Okay, enough talk for now, let’s dive in and see what this piece of software has to offer after all.




First things first - Setting up the software

ShapeChef for PowerPoint: It's time you leave your default Clipart tool behind - Image 1

Okay, now that might have been hyped-up a little bit, as there is not a lot of set-up to do after all! You can head on to the ShapeChef’s official website and download the trial version in an instant. This is paid software, so you could download a 30-day free trial from their official website.

The download comes in at 5.86MB. Once downloaded, you can install it instantly and there is little-to-none interruptions incurred about your trial version expiration! Now that it is installed, you can access this software by simply opening your edition of Microsoft PowerPoint.

Software Compatibility

ShapeChef is an add-on for Microsoft PowerPoint, so you will need that software of course! As far as versions are concerned, it works with all widely used versions of PowerPoint; including PowerPoint 2007 and 2010. It would be good to know that it supports all editions of PowerPoint, starting from the 2003 version to the very recent PowerPoint 2013 for Windows 8. So, you could use it even on your Windows 8 PC.

As far as Operating systems are concerned, it could come out as dismay for Mac users as they currently support only PC’s. So, no Mac versions for now, though you can make the most of this software if you own a PC.

Initial Interface

ShapeChef for PowerPoint: It's time you leave your default Clipart tool behind - Image 2

ShapeChef will be waiting for you on the right-hand side of your PowerPoint window as soon as you open it! As seen above, the tool box takes up a major portion of your PowerPoint window and so no need to worry about finding your newly installed add-on! Although the toolbox looks pretty fine, it could do well by taking up a little less space by default. Not of a major concern, as everything could be resized with pretty ease.
ShapeChef Features Overview






Adding new Shapes

ShapeChef for PowerPoint: It's time you leave your default Clipart tool behind - Image 3

Okay, so for avoiding any further confusion, we’ll be referring to clipart as ‘Shapes’ in this review for convenience sake. Clipart in this software is known as Shapes, and we’ll be using it throughout here. Adding new shapes is a piece of cake with this software. All you need to do is to access the shape that is visible on the selected slide, right-click on it and select ‘Add new Shape’.

So, to add your very own shapes to this clipart manager, you can drag it into your slide, right-click on it and add it to your collection. That’s it! Embedding new shapes into the slide is done by just dragging the visible shape from the toolbar.

Embedding downloadable graphics

ShapeChef for PowerPoint: It's time you leave your default Clipart tool behind - Image 4

ShapeChef also offers you to embed downloadable high quality graphics and visuals at the click of a button. At the bottom of the ShapeChef toolbox, you can clearly see a mark ‘Download more shapes’. All of those downloadable graphics are available from this link. An example of downloadable shapes is seen above. You can select from a wide range of computer network symbols, sketched frames, sketched arrows, global maps, etc from this box.

Some of these downloadable collections are free, while some of them come as in-app purchase.




Clipart Organizing tool

ShapeChef for PowerPoint: It's time you leave your default Clipart tool behind - Image 5

Here comes the best thing about this software - Its organizing tool! ShapeChef packs a very powerful feature of clipart/shapes organizing. This might be the only feature that Microsoft PowerPoint needed to have embodied into its software.

You can organize your shapes from here and group them together into custom relevant categories for easy access later.

Search Toolbar

ShapeChef for PowerPoint: It's time you leave your default Clipart tool behind - Image 6

ShapeChef features a powerful search tool for searching built-in shapes that are ready to embed right into your slides. The search toolbar is quite prominent at the top of your newly installed toolbox. The shapes that will be visible in the search result are ready to embed, so need to download them.

You can search for Maps, graphs, charts, emoticons, etc from this toolbar and drag them right into your slides. As mentioned earlier, you can easily download more graphics from the link at the bottom, if you can’t find what you are looking for over here.

Cloud services: Clipart over the air

ShapeChef for PowerPoint: It's time you leave your default Clipart tool behind - Image 7

The cloud services are the highlight of this software. Consider this feature as clipart over air! You are provided your own account for using their cloud services with the purchase of this software. You can store your collection of clipart over here and can access it any point of time later, from anywhere!

The software offers you to either upload your shapes collection as a private or public collection. Privately shared collection will be accessible to your own use. You can also make your collection public for people to access and use them. Similarly, you can also browse for others’ public collections and use them in your slides.




Pricing



The pricing of this tool depends on whom you intend to use it with. Say, for example, in your office you plan to use it along with a team of five other people, then it would come at a cost of $179.95. The price of a single user license would be $39.99. The price for a team of ten users comes in at $319.90 and the price for a team of fifty users could go as far as $1,399.50.

A single license of this software supports installation on up to two PC’s.

Conclusion - Our Verdict



ShapeChefis a powerful tool that would make up for the lost love for Microsoft PowerPoint clipart tool. This tool would be a great add-on for someone who makes a lot of presentations, as a part of his/her job and improve on the visual aspects of the presentation.

This software is a great supplement to the built-in clipart tool and brings in high quality graphics and imagery to the table. This tool brings a new lease of life to the PowerPoint presentations that are just endless lines of information, which are the least desirable!

Its clipart management and organizing tool are the best in its category and it must be on the check-list of everyone who prefers images to written words as presentation. Make the most of images and engage your audience with this add-on for Microsoft PowerPoint!

Our Rating -4.5 Out of 5

This review is listed under Development & Implementations Community

Related Posts:
Post a Comment

Please notify me the replies via email.

Important:
  • We hope the conversations that take place on MyTechLogy.com will be constructive and thought-provoking.
  • To ensure the quality of the discussion, our moderators may review/edit the comments for clarity and relevance.
  • Comments that are promotional, mean-spirited, or off-topic may be deleted per the moderators' judgment.
Awards & Accolades for MyTechLogy
Winner of
REDHERRING
Top 100 Asia
Finalist at SiTF Awards 2014 under the category Best Social & Community Product
Finalist at HR Vendor of the Year 2015 Awards under the category Best Learning Management System
Finalist at HR Vendor of the Year 2015 Awards under the category Best Talent Management Software
Hidden Image Url

Back to Top