Microsoft PowerPoint is a surprisingly powerful program for adding really nice images and text to an image.

You will need TWO things for this to work...
1) Any Microsoft PowerPoint from XP to Windows 8.
2) somewhere to paste your image. I recommend GIMP or Photoshop. Paint works, but if you have something else use that.

This tutorial uses PowerPoint 2010

STEP ONE... get a picture from SimCity 4. doctor it all you want. obviously, this is a stitched mosaic. If you want to crop it do that now.


STEP TWO... cut/copy-paste it into Microsoft PowerPoint. Do not crop it, you will lose your image quality later.


STEP THREE... find a place where you want to edit text. find the "text box" button. if your version is 2003 or older you can find it under the "draw" tab. In 2007 and 2010 it's where it is below. In 2013 it's in a similar spot in the home tab under the "shapes" menu.


STEP FOUR... draw the text box.


STEP FIVE... look for the drop-down menus that show the font and font size. if you don't want to select a size you can click the large "A" with the supescript arrow pointing up to increase the font instead.


STEP SIX... select a font and size. I chose Castellar (even though Colonna is the one highlighted, oops)


STEP SEVEN... type away! change the colors, add effects, do whatever you want. WordArt is recommended.


STEP EIGHT... move it somewhere. I moved it to the corner. notice the grayish lines off to the sides of the corners, these lines appear in the 2010 version, they mean you are perfectly aligned to it. in 2007 it will jump to the corner (as far as i can remember)


STEP NINE... once you are done, hit control and A (select all) and then control and C (copy). Copy it back to the image editor. For me, it is GIMP.


STEP TEN... crop out the transparent edges. You can do this manually (shown here) or use Image > Autocrop Image to do it for you.


STEP ELEVEN... powerpoint blows the image up sizewise, so be sure scale the image back down. my screen resolution for sim city is 1366x768 (yes that is hacked, see the region hack tutorial) so I will scale down to 1366 and let it calculate the other numbers (since its a mosaic). DO NOT go beyond this or the original image will look pixalated, only go to your screen resolution. If your screen is 800x600 then go to 800 or below. If it's 1920x1080 HD then go up to 1920 or below. This applies to stitched images also.


STEP TWELVE... save the image. Saving in a PNG format is easiest but if you tweak some settings in GIMP when saving, you should be okay with a JPG. I'm not sure how to do that in Photoshop though.


STEP THIRTEEN... show off the finished product!

click for full resolution! (1366x1803)

Nice job!

Is powerpoint free though?

Anyways, adding text in paint got horrible, you lost a lot of image quality. I started doing it in GIMP, and exporting it... i may try this

Joshriddle_1234 wrote:Is powerpoint free though?

No. It most commonly comes in a package with Microsoft Word and Excel. On old versions it came with Outlook as well, in new versions it comes with OneNote.

Heh, I do the same thing except in excel.

Powerpoint is better

Not sure that I've ever done this in excel

How the heck do you do it in Excel? I have to ask Link

Cheeseguy wrote:Nice job!

Is powerpoint free though?

Anyways, adding text in paint got horrible, you lost a lot of image quality. I started doing it in GIMP, and exporting it... i may try this

I suppose a free version of Powerpoint/MS Office would work, too, for you, Cheeseguy; it's worth a try.

I personally use Libre Office, and it's a pretty solid program.

I use libreoffice as well. I had an 180 trial for the full office suite that I got for acedemic reasons, but that's expiring soon.

LOL I just use GIMPs built in text thing

nice tutorial though K!

K50 wrote:How the heck do you do it in Excel? I have to ask Link

I paste the image in, then use word art. Just like in powerpoint. I find it easier in excel though because you have a "sheet" to work on. I'll show an image perhaps tomorrow of what my HD excel workbook (I'm now on my 2nd - each update gets a sheet) looks like. Basically I do what you do in powerpoint, but in excel. It's just what I used for photo-editing/text adding before I started CJing, and it has stuck.

I have used powerpoint in the past, though, for something simmilar.

Interesting SimLInk

I just use PS in text thingy

I took an entire class studying the four main programs of microsoft office, and never once came across graphics tools in excel. Interesting link!

Indeed, it is. This isn't Holt District's excel file (that's on my other computer ) however this one is covers some SMP3 banner work.



The 3 3's, SMP3 and Announcement are all separate word arts. The green background is a rectangle shape art added in. I should have selected all of the pieces to show you, but whatever. I'm sure you get the point.

Not the threes D:

That looks interesting I might have to try it out

Here's the same excel file but with all the "pieces" selected, so you can see how I put things together.

LOL even after taking a whole class on it, much remains to learn.