Color can have a powerful effect on your audience. While you need to be cognizant that colors mean different things in different cultures, you can use color to influence your audience’s mood and feeling about your message.

Or you can just create a fun feeling with one color or indicate a change in mood by transitioning from one color to another.

Duotones — photos that display 2 colors — are very much in vogue these days.

Here are some examples using a 2-tone semi-transparent overlay:

Here are 2 more examples using a more difficult technique that colorizes parts of one image with 2 different colors.

These types of slide will always stand out.

Semi-transparent gradient overlay

The first set of slides use a semi-transparent gradient overlay. For these slides, I used the Title Only layout. Here are the steps:

1. Insert an image.
2. To crop it for a widescreen slide, on the Format tab, click the down arrow at the bottom of the Crop button and choose Aspect Ratio, 16:9. Then click off the slide to finish the crop.
3. Right-click the image and choose Send to Back so that you see the slide title.
4. Optional: To make the colors on the overlay clearer, make the image grayscale. On the Picture Tools Format tab, choose Color, then Saturation: 0% under Color Saturation.
5. From the Home tab, click the Rectangle shape in the Drawing group and drag it across the slide to cover the entire slide.
6. Right-click the rectangle and choose Send to Back, Send Backward to move it behind the slide title but keep it in front of the image.
7. Right-click the rectangle again and choose Format Shape.
8. If necessary to display the fill options, click the Fill & Line icon (a bucket) and expand the Fill section by clicking its right-facing arrow.
9. Choose Gradient Fill. You’ll see the last-used gradient. Lower down, for the purpose of these steps, drag off all but 2 of the stops on the Gradient Bar.
10. Click one of the stops, click Color (below the Gradient Bar) and choose one of the colors or click More Colors for the full range of possibilities.
11. Use the Transparency bar or the text box to its right to set the desired transparency. I used about 50%.
12. Click the other stop and choose its color and transparency.
13. Add your text, making sure it stands out from the colors of the overlay.

Here’s an example shown larger…

Colorize parts of one image with 2 different colors

You can colorize photos in PowerPoint and with a little sleight of hand, you can color one part of a photo with one color and another part with a different color. You’ll need to find a photo with distinct sections.

Follow these steps:

1. Insert the photo and make a duplicate of it. Decide which parts of the photo you want to be which color. For one photo, you’ll use the Remove Background feature to remove everything except the part you want in your second color and you’ll put it on top of the first photo.  So for the photo of the woman with the megaphone, for one of the copies, I removed everything except the megaphone.
2. Select the duplicate and choose Format Tab, Remove Background. (You can see a video tutorial  about removing an image background here.)
3. Click Mark Areas to Remove on the Remove Background tab and drag across all of the areas of the photo that you want to remove. In my example, it was everything except the megaphone.
4. When you’re done, choose Keep Changes.
5. With the photo still selected, on the Format tab, choose Color and choose a color in the Recolor Section. You can choose More Variations, then More Colors to use any color you want.
6. Select the second photo and colorize it with the second color.
7. Place the first photo on top of the second photo so it matches exactly.

You’ll now see a photo colorized with 2 different colors. I also placed the 3 blue petals on top of the text and box.

If you want to learn simple design principles for non-designers…

…then you’ll love Slide Design for Non-Designers, updated for PowerPoint 2016/365.

Learn easy principles and techniques that designers use. If you need to create high-impact, professional-looking slides but aren’t a designer, this e-book will show you, step-by-step, how to easily get the results you want. Plus bonuses:

• Theme, template, and sample slides/presentation
• Rule of thirds measurements for widescreen slides
• 5 short video tutorials to make implementing the principles easy!

Check it out here