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Crop a picture by an exact measurement in PowerPoint

July 15, 2013 by Ellen Finkelstein 3 Comments

Usually, you crop a picture by selecting the picture, clicking the Format tab, and clicking the Crop button. Then you drag the crop handles. This process works well for many situations.

But if you want to end up with an exact measurement — let’s say to fit the picture into a predefined space — you can do that as well.

Here you see a slide that uses the Frame shape. It’s great for framing photos. The inside is not filled but of course you can place a photo in that blank space. At the bottom of the slide, you see a red arrow pointing to the frame shape’s yellow handle. This handle lets you adjust the width of the frame and therefore the size of the inner space.

At the upper-right, you see a shape that I’ve inserted inside the frame. I adjusted the yellow handle so that the inside rectangle is exactly 1.5″ wide by 2″ high. This gives me the dimensions that I need for my photos.

Find the exact size of any object on a slide

First, how do you discover the exact size of that inner rectangle — or any object for that matter? Here are the steps:

Select the object.
Click the Format tab.
Look for the size in the Size group. You can see this on the right.

Alternatively, right-click the object and choose Size and Position. Look on the Size tab of the Size and Position dialog box that opens.

So here you can see that the size I want for my photos is 2″ high by 1.5″ wide. Of course, the problem is that I need to crop all of my photos to that size. Although the photos themselves might all be the same size, I want headshots and I’ll need to crop so that all of the photos fit into the frames.

Crop to an exact measurement

Remember, I want to crop a photo to make it a headshot. It needs to fit into the 2″ high x 1.5″ wide space in my frame. This will involve cropping the image to get rid of the parts that I don’t want — and leave just the head.

Start by resizing the photo so that the head of the person was approximately the size I needed, but the full photo was larger. Always resize by dragging on a corner handle so that you don’t distort the photo.

PowerPoint 2013 makes this quite easy, but you can do it in earlier versions, too. Here are the steps that I used in PowerPoint 2013:

Right-click the image and choose Format Picture. The Format Picture taskpane opens on the right.
Click the Picture icon at the top. Doing so displays settings for picture corrections, picture color, and cropping. If necessary, expand the Crop section.
There are 2 sections. You’ll use the Crop Position section for this operation. Crop position sets the final width and height of the image and also lets you specify how much you want to crop off from the edges. In the Crop Position section, enter the desired size of your image in the Width and height boxes.
Your picture may not be properly centered. Use the Left and Top boxes to move the cropping border. Click the arrows up or down to easily make fine adjustments.

Here are the steps for PowerPoint 2007 and 2010:

Rich-click the image and choose Size and Position. The Size and Position dialog box opens.
On the Size tab, use the Crop From boxes — Left, Right, Top, and Bottom — to crop off the amount you need. Use the Height and Width boxes at the top (in the Size and Rotate section of the dialog box) to figure out how much you need to crop off.
To see the result, click the Close button. You’ll probably need to make a few adjustments to get the result that you want.

Here’s the final slide.

Highlight one part of an image in color

September 25, 2011 by Ellen Finkelstein 4 Comments

Highlighting a part of a grayscale image in color really makes it stand out!

Here are the steps:

Find a photo that you want to use and insert it.
Select the photo, then copy and paste it to duplicate it.
Select the original photo and choose Format tab> Color and choose the first swatch (Saturation 0%) to make the photo grayscale.
Now select the copy, and go to Format tab>Remove Background. I have a video tutorial here. Use the buttons to remove everything that you want to be grayscale. Keep everything that you want to remain in color. (Tip: Zoom in to more precisely choose what you want to keep and what you want to remove.)
Move the copy exactly on top of the grayscale version.
For ease of use, select both photos and group them (Ctrl + G).

Instead of making the original photo grayscale, you can apply other effects, such as blurring or other effects from the Artistic Effects drop-down list. Ric Bretschneider wrote a blog post a while back that uses a similar technique to create a blurred background.

Colorize a Photo for a Background

September 12, 2001 by Ellen Finkelstein Leave a Comment

A colorized, softened photo is a common background for a PowerPoint presentation. For example, you may want a photo that is entirely blue. You may have already seen the instructions for this technique, because it is part of the e-booklet that new subscribers to PowerPoint Tips Newsletter receive, but Guy Veazey reminded me that it wasn’t on the Web site. Here’s an example:

colorized and softened photo as background

Here are the steps for PowerPoint:

Insert the photograph that you want to use.
Select the photograph.
From the Picture toolbar, choose Color > Grayscale.
Draw a rectangle that exactly covers the photo.
Double-click the rectangle to open the Format AutoShape dialog box. (In 2007, right-click the rectangle and choose Format Shape.)
In the Fill section, set the transparency to about 50 – 65%.
From the Color drop-down list, choose a color.
In the Line (Line Color in 2007) section, choose No Line from the Color drop-down list.

You may want to adjust the brightness and contrast of the photo using the Picture toolbar and you can further adjust the transparency of the rectangle until you get the result you want.

You can use the result as is, or select both objects (drag diagonally from outside the top-left corner of the slide to outside the bottom-right corner), right-click and choose Save as Picture. When you save it, you can then insert it as a background.

You can create that same effect using Microsoft Photo Editor, which used to come free with Microsoft Office before Office 2003. (However, it was not installed by default. If you don’t have it, insert your pre-2003 Office CD and use the Setup program to install it. Photo Editor is part of Office Tools. To open Photo Editor, choose Start>Programs>Microsoft Office Tools>Photo Editor.) If you upgraded, you’ll probably find that Photo Editor is still on your computer.

Find a photo that you would like to use (you can use one of the photos in the Office clipart collection) and follow these steps:

Open Photo Editor.
Choose File > Open and navigate to your file. Click Open. In this example, I take this family photo (which I call 4 generations) and color it blue.

a picture for editing

Choose Image > Balance.
Choose Red from the drop-down list at the lower-left corner of the dialog box. Using the slider control, set the brightness to 0 and the contrast to 30. Leave the Gamma setting unchanged.
Choose Green from the drop-down list and set brightness to 30 and contrast to 30.
Choose Blue and set its brightness to 80 and contrast to 20. As you work, you immediately see the change in the image behind the dialog box. Of course, you can use any values that fit your needs.
Now choose All Colors from the drop-down list. If you want, make slight adjustments in the overall brightness and contrast.
Click OK to close the dialog box.
To soften the image, choose Effects > Soften.
In the Soften dialog box, drag the slider to the right (Strong) and click OK. You can repeat this process several times, further softening the image each time.
Choose File > Save As and save the file. Click Save. Here you see the result.

after editing