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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
Polyview-3D can make publication quality static views, as well as rotating views -- see below.
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.
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.