Presenting Molecular Views from Jmol

- Static Snapshots: (See below for presenting Rotating Views)
  It is easy to copy any molecular view from Jmol, and then paste it into a presentation or document (such as into MS Powerpoint®, MS Word, iWork® Pages or Keynote, or the free presentation or document editing programs Open Office Impress or Writer).
  Before starting, make sure you are showing the molecule in Smoother Graphics mode -- that is, the link below the molecule should say Smoother Rotation.
  - MS Windows: Alt-PrtSc (hold down the Alt key, then press the Print Screen key) copies the active window to the clipboard. You can then paste the image into another application (such as Powerpoint).
    - Cropping an image pasted into MS Powerpoint or MS Word: After you paste the image into an MS Powerpoint slide or MS Word document, click on the pasted image. A "Picture" toolbar will appear. It includes a cropping tool: click on to activate cropping. Edge markers will appear on your pasted image. Drag these to delimit the new cropped image. Click the cropping tool again to de-activate it. Now you can resize the image (with the corner handles) and drag it to the desired position.
    - To avoid the need for cropping, it is convenient to "lasso" the desired graphic area with the mouse.
      - MS Windows Vista comes with a Snipping Tool that does a nice job: Start, All Programs, Accessories, Snipping Tool. This tool copies a rectangular area to the clipboard, or saves it as an image file. More...
      - Windows XP does not provide any built-in method to lasso the desired portion of the screen (instead of copying the entire active window, and then cropping the image), but an inexpensive program called PrintKey is excellent for this.
  - Mac OSX:
    - Clipboard: Hold down Command (Apple) plus Shift plus Control (yes, 3 keys all at once!), and then press the "4" key. Now, use your mouse to click and drag a rectangle around what you want to save. When you release the mouse, the image defined by the rectangular lasso will be saved to the OS X Clipboard. Now you can paste it into a Powerpoint slide.
    - Saving an Image File: Hold down Command (Apple) plus Shift (just 2 keys), and then press the "4" key. Now, use your mouse to click and drag a rectangle around what you want to save. When you release the mouse, the image will be saved directly to a disk file (in Portable Network Graphics or .png format) on your desktop. This file can be displayed in a web browser, inserted into a Powerpoint slide, etc.
  Polyview-3D can make publication quality static views, as well as rotating views -- see below.

- Rotating Views:
- Rotating Views Method I: Use Polyview-3D

  Powerpoint-ready animation made with Polyview-3D. Click to see it larger!

  This is by far the easiest and best way to put a rotating (or high-quality static) custom molecular view in a Powerpoint® slide. However, it is not taking the view from the Jmol tutorial -- you re-create the view by filling out a simple form (with great flexibility for rendering, coloring, hiding) at Polyview-3D. You can also make static views here, and even animations of morphs.
  Once Polyview-3D has generated your image (large, smoothly-animated images may take up to an hour to make), you simply drag and drop it into your Powerpoint® slide! Animations will not animate until you project the slide.
- Rotating Views Method II: Run a Jmol tutorial during your presentation.
  Running a Jmol tutorial during your presentation is a powerful method for including rotatable, molecular views in a presentation. If most of your presentation is in Powerpoint, you would need to pop the browser window containing the Jmol tutorial in front of Powerpoint to show rotating molecular views. Then pop Powerpoint back in front afterwards. Unless you have a downloaded copy of the Jmol tutorial, this method requires a reliable Internet connection when projecting your presentation.

Feedback to Eric Martz.