Helping you with presenting, PowerPoint, and speaking
Microsoft is actively working to make the user interface and features of PowerPoint easier to use. This is good news!
One new feature is the Edit Picture dialog box.
With a selected image, you get to it by clicking the Picture Format tab and then choosing the Edit Picture icon.
However, two of the features in the Edit Picture dialog box have their own icons: Remove Background and Erase.
Here is the full Edit Picture dialog box…
[Read more…]
Sometimes, you may be in a situation where you have a complex background that includes graphics that cover part of the slide.
Maybe you were given a template by your company. Maybe you used one of PowerPoint’s templates or you bought a template.
The problem is that this type of background can interfere with adding large images that can make your slides more powerful.
In this video, I explain several ways to manage complex backgrounds. After the video, I briefly summarize the techniques.
The video is about 17 minutes long. (Note: This is a video I created quite a while ago, so the PowerPoint interface may be a little different from what you see, but the principles and instructions are still valid.)
[Read more…]One of the newer features of PowerPoint is cartoon people. They’re fun!
They are SVG files, like icons. You can resize them and recolor them. You can also ungroup them and edit them like other PowerPoint shapes. Here you see the original black along with a version in which I changed the outline color to blue.
While many of the cartoon people are complete like the one you see here, there are also “parts” so that you can combine them to make your own. I’m especially intrigued with the facial expressions that you can insert into a face.
From my perspective, you can use images on a slide in 3 ways:
How do you decide how to size, place, and format an image on a slide? It depends on your goal, your purpose.
There is no right way to use an image, but understanding these 3 ways will help you design better slides. You’ll learn how to use images purposefully so that they help you reach your goal for your presentations. At the end, I’ll give you a quick exercise that has helped others choose the best way to use an image on any slide.
I’ll describe all three ways of using images and give you examples, but I also want to focus on #3 because I think it is underused. So let’s get started!
By the way, these are all from my course, Power of Storytelling. [Read more…]
A simple way to create stunning slides is to layer an image, a shape, and text placeholders. Here are 2 examples:
Here are the steps to create these slides:
