Jan's PowerPoint Advanced: Slide Images

AutoLayout on =

Automatically positions and sizes any clip art or images you insert to match one of the standard Slide Layouts.

AutoLayout does not seem to affect photos or clip art in PowerPoint 2003.

AutoLayout off = Centers image on slide on top of any existing content. Size of photos will be large. Clip art will be fairly small.

Rotate or Flip an Image

You can rotate or angle an image on a slide or master. Flipping creates a mirror image, either horizontally or vertically. (See Method 3 below)

Method 1: Drag
The green circle at the top center of a selected image is a rotation handle. Hover over the handle and the mouse pointer shape changes to a circular arrow

. Drag the mouse in the direction you want the image to rotate. While dragging, the mouse pointer changes to 4 arrows in a circle

Method 2: Picture Bar - Rotate Left button

The Picture toolbar appears when you select a picture. The Rotate Left button

rotates the image 90º left. The button is a good choice when all you want is 90º, 180, or 270º rotation. You don't have to guess whether the image is straight yet or not!

Method 3: Drawing Bar - Rotate or Flip

The Draw button

on the Drawing Bar opens a menu with a submenu Rotate or Flip, containing the choices:

Step-by-Step: Slide Image

What you will learn:

to add an image to a slide
to position and resize image on the slide

Start with: , nz-bar.ppt

AutoLayout On

AutoLayout controls what happens when you insert a picture or other object.

From the menu, select Tools | AutoCorrect Options | AutoFormat As You Type tab.
Be sure that there is a check mark beside the item Automatic layout for inserted objects.

Slide: Insert Picture From File

If necessary, open nz-bar.ppt from your Class disk.
Select the Volcanoes slide so that it displays in the Slide Pane.
From the menu, select Insert | Picture | From file...
The Insert Picture dialog appears.
Navigate, if necessary, to the copy on your hard disk of the resource files.
Select the image volcano.jpg and click the Insert button in the dialog.

The image appears on the slide.

The image is sized to fit at the right and with the text placeholder re-sized to fit at the left.

That first line could look better. You need to resize the placeholder and move the image a bit.

The image is centered on top of the placeholder and is full size.

Adjust Layout

Placeholders and pictures are allowed to overlap each other, but the standard layouts do not do this. You don't want an image cover up any text, of course. Be careful to position and size your image so that it is clear of all the actual text, even though it overlaps the placeholder.

Click in the text placeholder to select it.
Drag the right side to the right until the first line fits across the slide.
Click on the picture to select it.
Drag a corner to make the image smaller.
Drag the picture down until it is clear of the text.
Save As nz-pictures.ppt to your Class disk.

If you plan for your images to overlap placeholders, turn off AutoLayout before you insert the images. You will save a lot of re-formatting steps!

More Pictures

Similar to the steps above, add the following images from the resource files:

map-nz.gif to the Title slide
rainforest.jpg to the slide Rain Forests
beach.jpg to the slide Ocean and Beaches
sunset.jpg to the slide Cities
As necessary, adjust the placeholder size and image position.
Save to your Class disk. [nz-pictures.ppt]

Try not to enlarge the photos as you are moving them. Photos get fuzzier when enlarged since they are bitmap images.

Insert Image: Clip Art

PowerPoint and other Office programs come with some clip art images. Usually you would want to use either all photos or all clip art to keep the same "look" for your presentation.

Select the last slide.
From the menu select Insert | Picture | Clip art...
The Task Pane changes to the Insert Clip Art pane.
Type globe, plane in the search box.
If necessary, change the search options to:
All collections
All media file types
Click the Search button.
The pane starts showing thumbnails of clip art with the keyword globe and the keyword plane.
Select in the Clip Art results the image of a globe and a plane at the right.

If you cannot find this particular image, choose a similar image from the results pane.
Click the image in the results pane. The clip art image is inserted on the slide.

If AutoLayout is off or you are using PowerPoint 2003, your image is centered on the slide but is on top of the text placeholder. That is fine this time.

If AutoLayout is on, in PowerPoint 2002 your text placeholder was resized and the image is at the right center of the slide. The next step handles that issue!
If you see a Smart Tag at the bottom right of the image, then AutoLayout was on. Hover over the arrow to open the Smart Tag menu and then click on Undo Automatic Layout .

This puts the image in the center on top of the text placeholder.
Drag the image to the bottom right corner of the slide.
Center the title and the two text lines on the slide.

Flip & Rotate Image

For a bit of practice, you will flip and rotate the new image.

While the image is selected, from the Drawing bar, click on the Draw button.
Hover over Rotate or Flip to open the submenu.
Select Flip Horizontal. The image changes so that the airplane is pointing the the right.
While the image is still selected, move your mouse over the green rotation handle and drag to the left to put the image at an angle.

Notice that the line from the center handle to the rotation handle is slanted, a rough measure of how much you have rotated the image.

Recolor Clip Art

You probably noticed that the color of the clip art was not a good match for the colors in the slide. Not to worry! The Picture toolbar includes a helpful Recolor button.

If an image has just a few colors, it is easy to change those colors to match the color palette of your presentation. Images that have a lot of colors or a number of similar shades are hard to recolor.

If necessary, select the clip art image you just inserted. The Picture toolbar appears. It may be floating or it may be docked among the other toolbars.
Click on the Recolor button on the Picture toolbar. The Recolor Picture dialog appears with the original image showing.

(Choose the correct button! The Recolor Picture button is not the same as the Fill Color button on the Drawing bar.)

The dialog will show a color bar for each color in the picture. You will have to scroll to see all of the colors when there are more than 6 or so.
Click the arrow at the right of the blue-green bar in the middle. A color palette opens.

The first row of colors is the colors in the Color Scheme. The next row is the colors you have chosen while working on the presentation.

None of these colors is the green in the image at the left of the slide.
Click on the link More Colors... The Colors dialog opens.
If necessary, switch to the Standard tab.
Select the green that is the first hexagon on the 6th row and click on OK to close the Colors dialog.
Click on OK to close the Recolor Picture dialog. Your clip art is now a matching green.
Save to your Class disk. [nz-pictures.ppt]

How to handle a full Class disk