## Creating PDF Presentations

### Presentation PDFs

Creating slide presentation PDFs in Scribus is not only easy, they also work great. Using PDF in place of traditional “presentation” applications like LibreOffice Impress or PowerPoint has the following advantages:

1. They are portable. You can create a PDF presentation in Scribus and display it on almost any computer with Adobe Reader or another modern PDF viewer. Other formats usually require the application itself (or a specialized viewing program) to be installed, and few are cross-platform.
2. You can use all the drawing, text manipulation and image handling tools in Scribus, which are in many cases superior to those in presentation applications. Few of them can import SVG, AI, EPS or PSD files reliably, if at all.
3. You will have more precise typographic control of text.
4. Because the slides are created in Scribus, you can export them with a higher resolution, and they will print beautifully.
5. Unlike other presentation tools, with use of the powerful form and JavaScript capabilities in Scribus you can make truly interactive PDFs which can take counts, ask questions with dialogs and more. You are only limited by your imagination and JavaScript skills.

#### Hints:

- You should use US Letter or A4 in landscape mode as the page size for your layout. This will most closely match the screen output of PDF viewers in full screen mode.
- Down-sample all images to 72–96 dpi, but do this in an image editing program like GIMP. Then import them into Scribus. Depending on the resolution of the displaying device, you might go as high as 120 dpi, but higher will not gain you sharpness.
- Embed all fonts. This ensures that the spacing and layout will remain the same, no matter which platform you are using.
- When displaying images like photos or screenshots, use a black or dark background on your page. They will make the colors more vibrant and give your viewers more contrast to see all the details in your slides.
- Use RGB colors for your images and always use “Screen/Web” as your output target.
- One trick for your actual presentation in front of an audience: Load the PDF and run through each page once before giving the presentation, so the file is loaded into memory. This will make for smoother transitions on the screen.

#### Settings and Options

Presentation effects and settings fall into two categories. The first (available in the “Extras” tab of the PDF Export dialog) is controlling the transition between slides when running a PDF presentation. There are a variety of effects which are in the drop-down boxes, and they are often not only supported in Adobe Reader, but also in recent Open Source PDF Viewers, for example Okular or Evince. Moreover, each page can have its own transition effect, different from the others:

Viewer options are the second and give you control over how the viewing application behaves when you open the file. They are available via the “Viewer” tab in the PDF Export dialog. It is recommended that you check “Single Page” and “Use Full Screen Mode” for presentations: