Digital photography teaches us to think of photos more as material rather than finished products. Many of us are proficient enough with photo-editing software to remove red-eye effects, brighten dark images, or click buttons to adjust contrast. But even if you’ve never touched photo-editing software, you can still use PowerPoint’s built-in imaging-editing functions to pump up photos on slides. PowerPoint’s photo tools wouldn’t satisfy a sophisticated digital photographer, but they’re good enough to pull off some pretty cool looks in presentations.

PowerPoint’s photo tools become available as soon as you click a picture on a slide. Click the Picture Tools tab that appears above the Ribbon to reveal a new Format tab loaded with accessories for customizing a photo’s look. (Changing a photo on a PowerPoint slide affects only the photo within the presentation. There are no changes to the original photo you selected.)

Change The Core Look

The first batch of tools on the far left affects the photo’s core appearance. Under Brightness, a drop-down list of gradations lets you make the image look brighter or darker in 10% increments. Under Contrast, another drop-down list works in the same way. With all of PowerPoint’s photo tools, you’ll see the tool’s effect on the photo when you rest your mouse pointer over a tool option, making it convenient to experiment with different looks. If you want finer control over the image’s brightness or contrast, click Picture Corrections Options in the Brightness or Contrast drop-down list and use the sliders or number boxes to make more precise adjustments. The Recolor tool lets you get artsy by applying a sepia tone, grayscale effect (which you’d probably see as more like black-and-white than PowerPoint’s actual black-and-white setting), and many accent colors. At the bottom of the Recolor drop-down list, you’ll find the Set Transparent Color option. You’ll have to play with this one a bit to see how its Andy Warhol-like effects can work for you.

At any time, you can back out of misguided changes by using the Undo option or by selecting Reset Picture on the ribbon. Keep in mind that the latter undoes all of the formatting you applied, including any initial sizing you may have done immediately after importing the image.

The nearby Compress Pictures button shrinks your presentation’s size by throwing out extra data in photos. Click the button and choose Options to indicate how much quality you’re willing to sacrifice in the name of smaller files. (Most of the time, you won’t notice a difference even if you choose the lowest quality setting.)

Fix The Frame

The next group of tools covers the elements surrounding the photo on the slide. You can add a variety of frames. Picture Shape lets you insert photos into any of the endless shapes PowerPoint has in its library. Once you add the shape, note that you can usually use handles to adjust its shape, revealing or hiding various parts of the photo.

Picture Border lets you add your own frame of sorts by adding a surrounding line of the color and thickness of your choosing. Picture Effects provides a huge variety of choices for presenting photos with shadows with effects such as beveled edges. Show restraint with these features unless you want your slides to look like the work of an overeager department store photo studio. Also, keep in mind that you may have to go back to the brightness and contrast controls if you choose an unusual angle. Some of them significantly alter a photo’s look.

Arrange & Crop

Many users get stumped by photo ordering, which addresses which image appears on the “top” of a pile when several photos overlap. To address this situation, use the Bring To Front and Send To Back buttons to adjust the layering.

Finally, on the far right side of the Format tab, use the Crop tools to focus on the important parts of a photo. Click Crop to produce handles you can drag to hide parts of photos. The cropped portions remain (unless you use the Compress Pictures tool and leave the Delete Cropped Areas Of Pictures box checked [checked by default]), so you can restore them to the view if you change your mind.

Home PowerPoint 2007 Contrast Formatting Photos
Search MS Office A-Z   |   Search Web Pages/ Design A-Z