Shutterstock launches Microsoft PowerPoint plug-in

Shutterstock, a provider of commercial imagery and music, has announced that it will now be providing Microsoft PowerPoint users integrated access to its collection of professional photos and illustrations. Shutterstock’s plug-in will work with PowerPoint 2013, PowerPoint 2016 and Office 365. This collaboration with Microsoft embeds Shutterstock’s offering directly into the presentation process, enabling users to choose images and preview them in a slide before buying. “One of the most common ways business professionals use Shutterstock images is in presentations,” said Jon Oringer, founder and CEO of Shutterstock. “With hundreds of millions of users, PowerPoint is one of the most successful presentation tools in the world; it’s the short-hand of business communications. We’re delighted to be working with the Office team to offer incredible images directly in the application.” “We know our customers are frequently using images to enhance their PowerPoint presentations,” said Steven Guggenheimer, Corporate Vice President Developer Experiences at Microsoft. “With this PowerPoint plug-in, Shutterstock is broadening its ability to enhance productivity, offering its extensive collection of high-quality imagery to professional users.” “Making high-quality imagery available in PowerPoint greatly increases the ability of our users to communicate visually. Concepts previously expressed as bullet points can come alive with a memorable image, leading to greater retention of ideas and effectiveness of the presented content. Access to better images, like those the Shutterstock add-in will provide, is another step in helping our users prepare more impactful presentations and is complementary to features like PowerPoint Designer, which makes recommendations on how to use that high-quality imagery effectively” said Shawn Villaron, PowerPoint Group Program Manager. To begin purchasing images, PowerPoint users can log into their own Shutterstock accounts or sign up for one. Users can search by keyword, or browse custom curated image categories like backgrounds, business, people, and nature.