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How to create a basic slideshow presentation in LaTeX with Beamer

This is the 19th video in a series of 21 by Dr Vincent Knight of Cardiff University. Here we see how to create a very basic presentation in LaTeX, using the beamer document class. We see how to use the \frame command to create slides, and in the next tutorial we'll see how to add a title page and more.

The example given in the video is also provided here as a template. To get started, click here to open the 'Presentation' example .

See the full list of tutorial videos .

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• Behind the Scenes

How to Make a Presentation in LaTeX

December 7, 2016 Trudy Firestone 5 Comments

When I was tasked with creating a presentation to share with my co-workers at our weekly tech talk, I chose to use LaTeX. While I briefly considered other tools, like Google Slides or PowerPoint, using LaTeX allowed me to easily separate the styling from my content and create my own theme that I could reuse for all future presentations at Lucid.

What? LaTeX for Presentations?

LaTeX is a typesetting and document creation tool that is often used for creating academic articles due to its ability to display mathematical equations. Beyond that, it has many other capabilities due to a large amount of packages, such as Forest, which I used for laying out sentence trees in a college Linguistics class. One such package, Beamer , allows you to create presentations. While Beamer lacks the simple click and drag functionality of a GUI tool in creating presentations, it makes up for it by automating a large portion of the stylistic work—as long as you like the default styles or are willing to write your own—and offering all the mathematical equations, graphs, and other tools available in LaTeX.

A sample Beamer document:

The Beamer commands are straightforward, and the flow of the presentation is easier to follow than it is in a GUI tool. While you could split the styling from the market using html and css, I enjoy using the Beamer package due to its concise creation of slides. Looking at a LaTeX file for a Beamer presentation is almost like looking at an outline which makes it more closely connected to the content the presentation is trying to convey. Unfortunately, I don’t like the default theme…or any of the other themes .

After lots of searching, however, I was able to create my own theme, lucid. Then, just by uncommenting \usetheme{lucid} , I was able to create a presentation I was pleased with. Only a few weeks ago, I was able to reuse the theme and create a new presentation with all the custom styling that I wanted in much less time than a GUI tool would have required to replicate my original theme.

Building Your Own Beamer Theme

While it’s easy to find documentation on creating a presentation using Beamer , it’s more difficult to locate documentation on building a Beamer theme. Therefore, I’m going to walk through creating a simple Beamer theme with its own title page, header and footer, and styled lists.

The first step in creating a Beamer theme is creating the following four files where “lucid” is the name of our new theme:

• beamerinnerthemelucid.sty
• beamerouterthemelucid.sty
• beamercolorthemelucid.sty
• beamerthemelucid.sty

While it’s not necessary to separate these into four files, it follows the pattern of Beamer’s own themes which allow for mixing and matching different parts of the theme. For instance, if we wanted to use the albatross color theme with the default theme we could replace \usetheme{lucid} in the above sample file like this:

And the output pdf would consist of this:

The three parts of a theme are:

• Inner: Defines the appearance of any items that make up the slides central content, e.g., lists or the title on the title page
• Outer: Defines the appearance of the chrome of the slide, e.g., the title and footer of each slide
• Color: Defines the colors used in various parts of the theme, e.g.,the color for frame titles or the background color

The final file, beamerthemelucid.sty, simply exists to combine all the parts of the theme into the main theme so it can be used without specifying each part of the theme.

beamerthemelucid.sty:

The change to presentation mode at the beginning of the file is added so that the .sty file will match the mode of the presentation .tex file. Beamer automatically converts all files with its document class to presentation mode. The rest of the file simply sets all the portions of the theme to the new lucid theme and then returns the file to the normal mode. Each of the .sty files used to create the theme needs to be put in presentation mode in the same way.

Right now, the theme doesn’t actually change anything. Everything is still using the default theme because we haven’t defined any new styles. Let’s start with the title page. Because the title is part of the inner content of the title page, the definition for its style goes into beamerinnerthemelucid.sty.

I want a title page that’s centered vertically and horizontally like the one in the default theme, but with a bigger font, a different color, and no date. So, let’s add the following to beamerinnerthemelucid.sty between the mode changes:

The \defbeamertemplate command creates a new template where the first argument is the mode, * in this case, the second argument is what the template is for, and the third argument is the name of the new template. To access the template elsewhere, the given name is used, in this case “lucid.” The final part of \defbeamertemplate is where the actual template is defined using arbitrary LaTeX code. In this case, we use common commands for centering and accessed the title and subtitle via \inserttitle and \insertsubtitle . To get the correct colors, we use \usebeamercolor which fetches the correct colors from the color theme based on the element name given, i.e., the name of the color. Similarly, \usebeamerfont fetches the correct font from the font theme, so that you can specify the font separately.

However, the color and the font remain unchanged, so we need to edit the color theme file next. I want white text on a dark background, so we need to change the background color first.

After adding these commands in beamercolorthemelucid.sty, the title page looks just about the way I want it. The background is gray, and the title and subtitle are in a new size and color. However, Beamer’s default links are still in the bottom right hand corner. To remove them, we add the following line to beamerouterthemelucid.sty because the footer is part of the outer theme.

Like \defbeamertemplate , \setbeamertemplate can be used to define a new template. The element that uses the template is immediately set to use the new template rather than being set separately. In this case, the navigation symbols element is set to empty.

Now that the title page looks just the way I want it to, we can move on to the content slides. While they already have the correct background color and are correctly lacking the navigation symbols in the footer, the title and subtitle are the wrong color and lack style.

Because the frame title is part of the outer theme, we add the following to beamerouterthemelucid.sty:

In addition to the now familiar Beamer commands, we use an if statement to differentiate between the cases of when there is and isn’t a subtitle, and we make use of a new package, tikz, which allows the user to create drawings in LaTeX. By using it in the template for the frametitle, we’ve added a rectangle to each frame title in the presentation. We set the color of the rectangle with the Beamer color frametitle-left which the command \usebeamercolor[fg]{frametitle-left} adds to the environment.

The colors and fonts are correctly reading from beamercolorthemelucid.sty, but it hasn’t been updated, so that’s the next step.

The content of the slides is still in the default style, so we turn to beamerinnerthemelucid.sty to modify the template for lists.

Just as \setbeamertemplate can be used to define a new template that is immediately applied, it can also be used to set a template defined by \defbeamertemplate earlier. square is defined by default in the beamer package, and it makes the bullets in an unordered list square.

To change the colors of content and the list items, we update beamercolortheme.sty again.

The last thing missing from our theme is a new footer. We need to add a page number and logo to each page.

Adding the above to beamerouterthemelucid.sty splits the footer in half, putting the page number out of the total number of pages on one side and a logo on the other. lucidsoftware-logo.png has to be included in the same directory for it to compile correctly. The if statement removes the page number from the first page.

Finally, we add the color for the page number to beamercolorthemelucid.sty:

Creating your own LaTeX theme allows for complete customizability, something you have to work very hard to achieve in more conventional presentational tools. It also makes it trivial to reuse the theme, avoiding wasted effort.

Additional References:

• Another Theme Example

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Was doing just that in the ’80s with DCF and Generalised Markup Language.

Styles were called “profiles”. You could roll your own, tailor an existing style or buy one.

The same base document could be formatted for a book, presentation or display.

Likely still used in producing IBM manuals.

So, have you uploaded your theme on CTAN? That’s the TeX-way to share 🙂

Thanks a lot This article helped me a lot to prepare my communication for this week (Stil working on it) Much thanks <3

Thank you a million times, i had a very very incredible experience with your tutorial. I made my own theme and i love it 🙂 I’m going to make a video on YouTube for this beautiful simplistic tex presentation solution. I’ll definitely link to your great tutorial there.

I do agree with all the ideas you have introduced on your post.

They’re really convincing and wll definitely work. Nonetheless, the posts are too brief for starters. May you please lengthen them a bit from subsequent time? Thanks for the post.

Your email address will not be published.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

LaTeX/Presentations

LaTeX can be used for creating presentations. There are several packages for the task, such as- Powerdot , Prosper , Seminar , etc, however, the Beamer package is the most widely used.

It should be noted that Latex produces the presentation as a PDF which can be viewed in fullscreen mode with some pdf reader (e.g. Okular , Evince or Adobe Reader). If you want to navigate in your presentation, you can use the almost invisible links in the bottom right corner without leaving the fullscreen mode.

• 1.1 Title page and author information
• 1.2.1 Sections and subsections
• 1.2.2 References (Beamer)
• 1.3.1 The Built-in solution
• 1.3.2 User-defined themes
• 1.3.3.1 Math Fonts
• 1.4 Frames Options
• 1.5 Hyperlink navigation
• 1.6 Animations
• 1.7 Handout mode
• 1.8 Columns
• 1.10 PDF options
• 1.11 Numbering slides
• 2 The Powerdot package
• 3.1 Beamer based themes/examples
• 3.2 References

The Beamer package [ edit | edit source ]

The beamer package is provided with most LaTeX distributions, but is also available from CTAN . If you use MikTeX, all you have to do is to include the beamer package and let LaTeX download all wanted packages automatically. The documentation explains the features in great detail. You can also have a look at the PracTex article Beamer by Example . [1]

The beamer package also loads many useful packages including xcolors, hyperref , etc. An introductory example and its output are shown below.

In above code, the Beamer package is loaded by the \documentclass{beamer} command in the header. The usual header information may then be specified. In Beamer presentation a frame is an equivalent term for the slide (used in MS office). A frame is defined using the environment \begin{frame} ...... \end{frame} . The \frametitle{} command specifies the title for each slide. The frame title and subtitle can also be passed with the environment as following.

The usual environments ( itemize , enumerate , equation , etc.) may be used. Inside frames, you can use environments like block , theorem , proof , ... Also, \maketitle is possible to create the Title page, if title and author are set.

Title page and author information [ edit | edit source ]

The title page is the first page where one may insert following information

• Title and subtitle (optional)- Use \title and \subtitle commands, or use \title[short title (optional)]{Long title}{subtitle (optional)}
• Author(s) name- Use the \author{} command.
• Institute name- Use the \institute command. Note the use of \inst{1} and \inst{2} commands to associate the authors with their respective institutes.
• Date and Place of presentation- It can be inserted using the \date[short date(optional)]{Long date} command.
• Logo of Institute, etc.

It should be noted that the information within square braces, i.e., [ ] is optional.

It is important to include the \maketitle command in the document (as in above code) to create the title frame. The commands \maketitle and \titlepage are equivalent.

Table of Contents [ edit | edit source ]

The table of contents, with the current section highlighted, is displayed by:

This can be done automatically at the beginning of each section using the following code in the preamble:

Or for subsections:

Sections and subsections [ edit | edit source ]

As in all other LaTeX files, it is possible to structure the document using

Those commands have to be put before and between frames. They will modify the table of contents with the argument in brackets. The optional argument will be shown in the headline navigation on the slide, depending on the theme used. You can use \sectionpage macro to generate a separator slide for a declared section, for example

References (Beamer) [ edit | edit source ]

The following example shows a manually made references slide containing two entries:

As the reference list grows, the reference slide will divide into two slides and so on, through use of the allowframebreaks option. Individual items can be cited after adding an 'optional' label to the relevant bibitem stanza. The citation call is simply \cite . Beamer also supports limited customization of the way references are presented (see the manual).

The different types of referenced work are indicated with a little symbol (e.g. a book, an article, etc.). The symbol is set with the commands beamertemplatebookbibitems and beamertemplatearticlebibitems . It is also possible to use setbeamertemplate directly, like so

Other possible types of bibliography items, besides book and article , include e.g. online , triangle and text . It is also possible to have user defined bibliography items by including a graphic.

If one wants to have full references appear as foot notes, use the \footfullcite from the biblatex package. For example, it is possible to use

Themes [ edit | edit source ]

Beamer offers two ways for define the themes- 1) Use built-in themes, 2) Use user-defined themes.

The Built-in solution [ edit | edit source ]

Beamer has several built-in themes which can be used by specifying their "Name" and their "color" in the preamble. This Theme Matrix contains the various theme and color combinations included with Beamer . For more customizing options, have a look to the official documentation included in your distribution of beamer , particularly the part Change the way it looks .

The full list of themes is:

The full list of color themes is:

User-defined themes [ edit | edit source ]

First you can specify the outertheme , which defines the head and the footline of each slide.

Here is a list of all available outer and inner themes:

You can define the color of every element:

Colors can be defined as usual:

Block styles can also be defined:

You can also suppress the navigation symbols:

Fonts [ edit | edit source ]

You may also change the fonts for particular elements. If you wanted the title of the presentation as rendered by \begin { frame } [plain] \titlepage\end { frame } to occur in a serif font instead of the default sanserif, you would use:

You could take this a step further if you are using OpenType fonts with Xe(La)TeX and specify a serif font with increased size and oldstyle proportional alternate number glyphs:

Math Fonts [ edit | edit source ]

The default settings for beamer use a different set of math fonts than one would expect from creating a simple math article. One quick fix for this is to use

Frames Options [ edit | edit source ]

The options to a frame can be passed as following

Some of the useful options and their description is following.

• plain : This option removes all the formatting from your slide and thus give you extra space to accommodate a large figure or a large table.
• shrink : If you want to include lots of text on a slide use the shrink option.
• allowframebreaks  : option will auto-create new frames if there is too much content to be displayed on one.
• fragile : Before using any verbatim environment (like listings ), you should pass the option fragile to the frame environment, as verbatim environments need to be typeset differently. Usually, the form fragile=singleslide is usable (for details see the manual). Note that the fragile option may not be used with \frame commands since it expects to encounter a \end { frame } , which should be alone on a single line.

Hyperlink navigation [ edit | edit source ]

Internal and external hyperlinks can be used in beamer to assist navigation. Clean looking buttons can also be added.

By default the beamer class adds navigation buttons in the bottom right corner. To remove them one can place

in the preamble.

Animations [ edit | edit source ]

It is possible to make figure and text to appear and disappear using the commands such as \pause, \uncover, \only and \itemize<a-b>. Text or figures after these commands will display after one of the following events (which may vary between PDF viewers): pressing space, return or page down on the keyboard, or using the mouse to scroll down or click the next slide button. A short explanation of each command is as follows and refer to chapter 9 of the Beamer manual for more details..

The \pause statement can be used as following to provide a break. I.e. the text after the command will be displayed on next event (button click/ key press/etc.)

The \uncover command specifies the appearance explicitly; \only works the same but without reserving space when hidden.

The \item command specifies appearance and disappearance of text by using <a-b> where a and b are the numbers of the events the item is to be displayed for (inclusive). For example:

A simpler approach for revealing one item per click is to use \begin { itemize } [<+->] .

In all these cases, pressing page up, scrolling up, or clicking the previous slide button in the navigation bar will backtrack through the sequence.

Above command uncovers the item and they are visible only on/after the specified frame numbers. One may also use the \setbeamercovered{transparent} command to see the uncovered items, which are shown with little opacity. This means if the visible text is in black then the uncovered text will be in gray. One may use \setbeamercovered{invisible} to revert this setting.

Similar option is also available for formatting the text. for example if you want the text to be of specific style then you may use \style<3->{Text} command. For example one may use \alert<3->{Some text.} which will show the specified text in the respective formatting for specified slides. Similarly one may use

\textbf, \textit, \textsl, \textrm, \textsf, \textcolor, \structure etc. commands.

Same is true for theorem, corollary, and proof environments. An example is given below.

For the tables one must add \onslide slide command before placing the new line (i.e., \\) .

Test 1 & repeat & 14.5 & 656 \onslide<3-> \\

Handout mode [ edit | edit source ]

In beamer class, the default mode is presentation which makes the slides. However, you can work in a different mode that is called handout by setting this option when calling the class:

This mode is useful to see each slide only one time with all its stuff on it, making any \itemize [<+->] environments visible all at once (for instance, printable version). Nevertheless, this makes an issue when working with the only command, because its purpose is to have only some text or figures at a time and not all of them together.

If you want to solve this, you can add a statement to specify precisely the behavior when dealing with only commands in handout mode. Suppose you have a code like this

These pictures being completely different, you want them both in the handout, but they cannot be both on the same slide since they are large. The solution is to add the handout statement to have the following:

This will ensure the handout will make a slide for each picture.

Now imagine you still have your two pictures with the only statements, but the second one show the first one plus some other graphs and you don't need the first one to appear in the handout. You can thus precise the handout mode not to include some only commands by:

The command can also be used to hide frames, e.g.

or even, if you have written a frame that you don't want anymore but maybe you will need it later, you can write

and this will hide your slide in both modes.

A last word about the handout mode is about the notes. Actually, the full syntax for a frame is

and you can write your notes about a frame in the field note (many of them if needed). Using this, you can add an option

The first one is useful when you make a presentation to have only the notes you need, while the second one could be given to those who have followed your presentation or those who missed it, for them to have both the slides with what you said.

Columns [ edit | edit source ]

Columns environment divides a slide (vertically) into columns. Example

Blocks [ edit | edit source ]

Enclosing text in the block environment creates a distinct, headed block of text (a blank heading can be used). This allows to visually distinguish parts of a slide easily. There are three basic types of block. Their formatting depends on the theme being used.

PDF options [ edit | edit source ]

You can specify the default options of your PDF. [2]

Numbering slides [ edit | edit source ]

It is possible to number slides using this snippet:

However, this poses two problems for some presentation authors: the title slide is numbered as the first one, and the appendix or so-called "backup" (aka appendix, reserve) slides are included in the total count despite them not being intended to be public until a "hard" question is asked. [3] This is where two features come in:

• Ability to exclude certain frames from being numbered. For instance, this may be used at the title slide to avoid counting it:
• This stuff works around the problem of counting the backup frames:

The Powerdot package [ edit | edit source ]

The powerdot package is an alternative to beamer. It is available from CTAN . The documentation explains the features in great detail.

The powerdot package is loaded by calling the powerdot class:

The usual header information may then be specified.

Inside the usual document environment, multiple slide environments specify the content to be put on each slide.

Simple presentations [ edit | edit source ]

The beamer class is very powerful and provides lots of features. For a very simple presentation, a class based on article can be used.

Beamer based themes/examples [ edit | edit source ]

Some of the nice examples of the presentation are available below

• The Nord beamer theme
• Metropolis theme
• Kenton Hamaluik
• A list of theme maintained at github

References [ edit | edit source ]

• ↑ Andrew Mertz and William Slough, Beamer by Example
• ↑ Other possible values are defined in the hyperref manual
• ↑ Appendix Slides in Beamer: Controlling frame numbers

Links [ edit | edit source ]

• Wikipedia:Beamer (LaTeX)
• Beamer user guide (pdf) from CTAN
• The powerdot class (pdf) from CTAN
• A tutorial for creating presentations using beamer

• Pages using deprecated enclose attributes
• Wikibooks pages with to-do lists

Navigation menu

How to make slides in LaTex

The beamer class.

The beamer class is a LaTeX class that allows you to create a beamer presentation. It can also be used to create slides. It behaves similarly to other packages like Prosper, but has the advantage that it works together directly with pdflatex, but also with dvips.

The Latex Beamer Class Homepage  provides with the steps to create a beamer presentation and some examples

Beamer Tutorial - MIT  (pdf)

LaTeX Beamer Templates

LaTeX Beamer Video

Powerdot is a presentation class for LaTeX that allows for the quick and easy development of professional presentations. It comes with many tools that enhance presentations and aid the presenter. Examples are automatic overlays, personal notes and a handout mode. To view a presentation, DVI, PS or PDF output can be used. A powerful template system is available to easily develop new styles.

CTAN  provides additional details on Powerdot.

Quick Tutorial on Powerdot for slide making

Note:  These softwares are not a part of the default installation for LaTeX. The software downloads can be obtained from the respective homepages. For further assistance with the installation on your machine please contact  computer support