Unless you’re a typographer fonts aren’t usually that exciting. But they’re everywhere and it’s important to understand how to use them on your slides in PowerPoint.
Since I don’t really like to bore people, I’ll leave the nerdy font lesson to my buddy, David Anderson. So, here are a couple really useful font tutorials that will help you build more cohesive PowerPoint presentations and slides.
Here’s a quick tutorial that I did for a friend who wanted to know how to customize clip art characters.
Basically steps
Select the character
Ungroup the clip art
Customize it
Select all and group to make a single image
If you like, save the character as a distinct graphic file. EMF = keeps it vector so you can scale. If you’re using gradient colors, you might want to save as a .PNG.
In Hollywood, when they make movies that require special effects they’ll use the infamous blue screen (although many times it’s a green screen). What they do is shoot the scene and then later replace the colored screen with a different image or video.
They choose a color screen that can easily be selected and replaced. Today, you’ll learn to do something similar in PowerPoint.
Let’s say you have a PowerPoint shape and you want to put a hole in it. In the example below, we’re going to create a piece of paper that looks like a 3-ring binder page. What we want to do is have the holes in the page be transparent.
Create the piece of paper in PowerPoint using the rectangle tool.
Then add three circles.
Fill the circles with a lime green (or any other color).
Get rid of the outline color.
Select the object and cut it from the screen (or CTRL+X). This places it on the clipboard.
Select Paste Special and paste it as a .PNG file. By pasting as a PNG file, you’ll maintain the image quality and retain any transparency.
Select the Set Transparent Color feature and click on the green color. That will make the green color transparent and you should end up with a see through hole.
That’s basically it. The transparent tool in PowerPoint 2007 and lower can only work on one color, that’s why you want the fill to be solid and to be a color that is no where else in the image. PowerPoint 2010 has a more sophisticated transparent tool feature.
Once you master this technique you’ll find all sorts of uses for it, like getting rid of backgrounds. Here’s a tutorial that shows it in action.
In the tutorial he covers how to save the assets you create and use in your PowerPoint slides. One of the benefits of creating your graphics in PowerPoint is that you can easily share the development files.
He also discusses three image formats and how they work in the slides.
Paste Special is one of those commands that doesn’t get used a lot in PowerPoint, yet it offers a lot of extra functionality. Let’s look at some of what you can do with the Paste Special command.
Below I added a bunch of information from the Microsoft site with a link. If you are inclined to learn everything about Paste Special, have at it. For those looking for the nuts and bolts, here it is.
When you copy an object it gets placed on the clipboard. This allows you to paste the object copied. However, by selecting Paste Special, you can paste the object and apply some other features.
One of the reasons I use Paste Special is to create a graphic in PowerPoint and then copy and paste it as an image so that I can use the object as an image rather than as a PowerPoint object.
A good example of this might be when I want to use the picture effects with something I created in PowerPoint. By copying and Paste Special I can convert the PowerPoint object to an image file on the fly. This is a big time saver.
To learn more about Paste Special, check out the quick tutorial.
You can specify formatting when you paste slides, pictures, objects, and text from other presentations, programs, or the Web into your presentation.
For example, like pictures and other objects, text in a presentation has its own formatting — such as typeface, color, and font size. When you copy text that has different formatting into your presentation, PowerPoint automatically reformats that text to match the text in your presentation. However, you can use Paste Special to maintain the original formatting.
On the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, click the arrow under Paste, click Paste Special, and then do one of the following:
To specify the format that you want to paste the slide, text, or object as, click Paste, and then use the table below to select a format from the Use this format list.
To add a hyperlink to a separate document or presentation, click Paste Link.
Note The Paste Link option is unavailable if you cut or copied content from a document that does not support the Paste Link option, or if the document that you are attempting to link to has not been saved.
Use this format
When:
Formatted Text
You want the text to retain the formatting of the text from the other presentation, program, or Web page.
Note When you copy text from another presentation, the Web, or a different program (that has different formatting) into to your presentation, by default, that text is automatically reformatted to match the text in your presentation.
Unformatted Text
You want the text to take on the formatting of the presentation you are pasting to.
The GIF file format is limited to 256 colors, and is therefore most effective for scanned images, such as illustrations, and less effective for color photographs. GIF is also a good file format for line drawings, black and white images, small text that is only a few pixels high, and animation.
The PNG file format is similar to GIF but it provides better color support. It compresses solid areas of color while preserving sharp detail, such as the detail in line art, logos, or illustrations with text.
You can save, restore, and resave a PNG image without degrading its quality. Unlike GIF files, PNG does not support animation, and some older Web browsers and applications do not support PNG.
You can save a picture as a 16-bit graphic (for use with Windows 3.x and later).
Picture (Enhanced Metafile)
You want the contents of the Clipboard to appear as an Enhanced Metafile (EMF) format.
You can save a picture as a 32-bit graphic, which supports more sophisticated graphics functions.
Device Independent Bitmap
You want the contents of the Clipboard to appear as a Device Independent Bitmap (DIB), such as a slide acting as a graphic for use on Web pages.
A DIB is a representation (that consists of rows and columns of dots) of a graphics image in computer memory. The value of each dot (filled in or not) is stored in one or more bits of data.
The Microsoft Windows BMP format can display millions of colors. Because it is supported by several programs, it is an extremely practical file format to use when you are providing an image to someone who may not have the program in which you created the image.
Note The Display as icon check box is only available if you use Paste Link or if you paste the content as an OLE object. You can then can change the icon for the content that you pasted.
One of my favorite features in PowerPoint 2007 and beyond is that I can right click and swap out images. This is really helpful if you have effects or animations applied to your images.
In the older versions of PowerPoint, you had to delete the image and replace it with another. Then you’d have to reapply the effects and animations. That’s not the case anymore.
All you do now is right click on the image, and select Change Picture. From there you select a new image. And voila! You have a new image with all of the animations and effects intact.
Here’s tutorial that gives you some more detail so you can see it in action.
So you can see, it’s pretty easy and a big time saver, especially if you pre-build animations to be reused. It definitely comes in handy if you build rapid elearning courses.
The problem with most PowerPoint slides is that they look like PowerPoint slides. There’s usually not a lot of creativity or visual design applied to look and feel of the presentation.
Well, here’s a simple tutorial that shows you how to use the gradient fills in PowerPoint to create slides that are visually rich and very dynamic.
Essentially, you’re going to create a rectangle shape in PowerPoint. Apply a gradient fill with some transparency, and lay that on top of the main image.
Check out the tutorial below for all of the details.
Here’s a simple tutorial that shows how to quickly remove the background color from your images. Now this works if your background color is solid. If it’s not, you’ll need to take the image into a graphics program, like the free Paint.net, to remove the background.
Then click on the color you want to be transparent.
The only downside is that you can only select one color. And it removes that color regardless of where it’s at on the slide. For simple images with solid color backgrounds, this works great.
What do you do to remove the background from your images in PowerPoint?
David Anderson over at Articulate is known for his cool visual design tips and tricks. He has a great tutorial on creating a page curl shadow effect in PowerPoint. It’s a great effect to add depth to the objects on your screen.
It requires that you edit points on your PowerPoint shape. PowerPoint 2007 lets you do that for all of your shapes. In older versions of PowerPoint, you have to create a shape using the drawing tools and then you can edit them.
If you have PowerPoint 2007, you already have a bunch of nice shadow effects. But by applying the tips from this tutorial, you’ll be able to make your shadows look more natural and organic.
The basic steps for the PowerPoint tutorial are:
Create a rectangle shape.
Convert the shape to freeform.
Right click on the shape, and select edit points.
Move the corner points and then use the bezier tool to create your curve.
Apply a soft edge and fill it with a gray shadow color.
Place the shadow under the object and size to get the right effect.
In the tutorial, he also shows how to create a quick Polaroid look for the images. It’s a great tutorial. Easy to do and will make your shadows look that much more dynamic. Give it a try.
It’s not really a matter of right or wrong as it is a matter of how the fonts you use in your PowerPoint files communicate with your audience and contribute to the overall tone and visual design of the slides.
When using fonts, you kind of have two considerations.
Is the font going to be legible? Can people read and retain the information.
What does the font’s design communicate? How well does it support the tone and design of your slide content?
So, here are a couple really useful font tutorials that will help you build more cohesive PowerPoint presentations and slides.
