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Making Images Transparent in Microsoft PowerPoint

You’ve found the perfect image that illustrates the point you’re trying to make in your presentation, so you drop it in. Unfortunately it has a big white rectangle around it that really spoils the look. Or you’ve inserted the logo for your company’s new product but the black background makes it jar against the slide. You could modify it in a dedicated image editing program such as Adobe Photoshop, however PowerPoint has many useful image editing abilities built in.

Image in PowerPoint without transparency
Not a good look.

One of these features include setting one of the colours to be transparent. Here’s how to achieve this in different versions of PowerPoint.

powerpoint 2007 image transparency optionsSetting the transparency in PowerPoint 2007:

  1. Select your image
  2. Select the Format tab on the ribbon
  3. Select Recolor
  4. Choose Set Transparent Color
  5. Now click on the colour in the image you wish to set as see-through.

powerpoint 2010 image transparency settingsSetting the transparency in PowerPoint 2010:

  1. Select your image
  2. Select the Format tab on the ribbon
  3. Select Color
  4. Choose Set Transparent Color
  5. Now click on the colour in the image you wish to set as see-through.

powerpoint 2013 image transparency settingsSetting the transparency in PowerPoint 2013:

  1. Select your image
  2. Select the Format tab on the ribbon
  3. Select Color
  4. Choose Set Transparent Color
  5. Now click on the colour in the image you wish to set as see-through.

powerpoint after transparencyNote the results aren’t always perfect and you occasionally get artifacts surrounding your object, but it’s much better than the original. You can always try clicking a different part of the image and seeing if it gauges the transparent colour with more accuracy.

Want to know more? This technique among many others is covered in our Best STL PowerPoint training, London and UK wide.

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PowerPoint Training

How to add slides and add layouts (Powerpoint Training)

I have created a blank presentation, using the File menu, and then selected New, and Blank presentation

new-powerpoint-file-Powerpoint.training
Create a new file using the File menu, select New, then Blank Document.

PowerPoint gives me one slide.  Now I know I’m going to need at least three slides for my presentation, so I want to add two more slides.

I use the ribbon, I’m already in the Home tab, so I select the New Slides icon, if I click on the picture of a new slide, one new slide is inserted.

Home-tab-insert-slide-icon-Powerpoint.Training
The Insert Slide icon makes it really easy to add to your presentation.

I get a new blank slide.  I want to add another one, so I click on the icon again, and now I have three pages in my presentation.

Then next job is to add the layout to my new slides.
I select the the second slide, and use my right mouse click to bring up some options for formatting, I select Layout.

formatting-slide-right-mouse-click-powerpoint.training
The Layout options appear for you to view and select the one to fit the content in your presentation.

This gives me a drop down menu of slide formats, I can slide my cursor over these to preview the format, and when I am happy I click the layout I want.

I can repeat this with the third slide, using the same method. I can change the format at any time using the ‘right click, Layout method’.