Marcato Presenter Resources

Primary Presentation Tools

• Upscaling images (increasing the resolution while retaining quality): Pixelcut.ai (about $10/month) or Canva Pro ($18/month) both do this well.

• Converting images between horizontal & vertical - use layer masks to adjust (see the video examples below). Affinity is a free program that allows you to do this.

  • Also: Extend a photo to make space for text - use layer masks as well (same as previous) to extend a texture/backdrop or to add a separate backdrop in

  • Also: Remove or alter something in a photo (like take a band shot and turn it into a solo shot) - also with layer masks

• Converting Vertical Video to Horizontal: Use the “Blanking Fill” feature in Da Vinci Resolve (free video editing software)

• Rapidly Create Vertical Reels from Horizontal Video: Use “Timeline Settings” and select “Vertical Resolution” in Da Vinci Resolve (see video example below)

• Rapidly create multiple on-brand posts for various concerts: Use Canva’s Bulk Create tool (available in Canva Pro)

• Create alternate video assets using an artist photo & animation overlays: Use CapCut (free video tool) or Motionleap (iPad/iPhone software, about $11/month)

• Creating blurbs and show taglines: Upload multiple taglines from other shows on your season to ChatGPT/ Claude / etc. and then give them a long form artist bio and ask it to generate 10-15 versions of a tagline using the other examples as guidance.

• AI asset generation (for textures, background, creating your own stock photos): Openart.ai (about $14/month)

• Expanding a photo with AI (filling in the rest of someone’s body, etc.) - Photoshop is really best for this, but you can use Pixelcut.ai or other tools, though they sometimes limit the resolution of this. Consumer online tools typically are not as powerful as Photoshop.

Additional Resources

• Free professional stock photos for commercial use:‍ ‍Pexels.com, Pixabay.com

• Fonts: How to identify a font from a photo: Myfont.com

• Find fonts for commercial use: http://fonts.google.com/ (to check if a font you found from a free online site is actually licensed for commercial use, I recommend asking ChatGPT as google results can be misleading)

• Downloading YouTube assets (may want to consider TOS & copyright issues before using): 4k Downloader Plus