Monday, October 31, 2011

How to Crop Picture Using Shapes in PowerPoint

You know, Microsoft has provided us many useful tools for creating a wonderful presentation. The Shapes is one of them. There are more than 100 shapes preset in PowerPoint, like cycle, rectangle, triangle and other basic shapes.

Usually we use these shapes as buttons or hyperlinks. Indeed, you can also use these shapes to crop a picture in PowerPoint. How to do it?

Method 1: Insert Shape first.

Step 1: Choose any shape from: Insert > Shapes. Drag your mouse and draw the shape.
Crop Picture Using Shapes in PowerPoint-1

Step 2: Right click on the shape and choose Format Shape.
Crop Picture Using Shapes in PowerPoint-2

Step 3: In the Fill tab, choose Picture or Texture Fill.
Crop Picture Using Shapes in PowerPoint-3

Step 4: Click Insert from File…, and select the picture you want to crop. Now you will see the picture be cropped like this:
Crop Picture Using Shapes in PowerPoint-4

Method 2: Insert picture first.


Step 1: Insert the desired picture: Insert > Picture.


Step 2: Select the picture, and from the Picture toolbar, click Picture Shape, and from the drop down lists, choose a shape.
Crop Picture Using Shapes in PowerPoint-5

Then you will also see the picture like below:
Crop Picture Using Shapes in PowerPoint-4

Links:

4 comments:

  1. I'm on the fence about this, while more customization is good, I have a feeling this is a "in-progress" update, it just feels incomplete and half-way there.
    We use badge layout for apps on design approvals (visual projects), so the image being displayed is important. Old layout "feels like" it had larger images,
    maybe because the images were cropped more loosely so it's easier to tell which project it was at quick glance. Now the image is cropped closer, making it
    harder to scan thru at quick glance. I find myself needing to click into the project more often than usual. Which makes the whole user experience less
    efficient.
    I have a couple suggestions that might make it work better:
    1. Increase the height of the window the cover image is being displayed.
    2. Let us to choose which image to be displayed as "cover" (like how Pinterest handles cover images of each board, was hoping for this for a long time)
    3. Let us adjust which part of the image to show and how tight or loose the crop is (with a fixed window, let us move the image around and maybe enlarge or
    shrink it to control what shows thru the window. Pinterest does a limited form of this, which is very useful in making the cover image relevant)
    4. Allow Cover Image to be ordered in different hierarchy (currently every element can be ordered differently except the Cover Image, it seems to be stuck
    in the 2nd spot, would like the option to set it on another spot in the layout. This one seems like an easy fix, since you guys allow that for every other
    element already)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm on the fence about this, while more customization is good, I have a feeling this is a "in-progress" update, it just feels incomplete and half-way there.
    We use badge layout for apps on design approvals (visual projects), so the image being displayed is important. Old layout "feels like" it had larger images,
    maybe because the images were cropped more loosely so it's easier to tell which project it was at quick glance. Now the image is cropped closer, making it
    harder to scan thru at quick glance. I find myself needing to click into the project more often than usual. Which makes the whole user experience less
    efficient.
    I have a couple suggestions that might make it work better:
    1. Increase the height of the window the cover image is being displayed.
    2. Let us to choose which image to be displayed as "cover" (like how Pinterest handles cover images of each board, was hoping for this for a long time)
    3. Let us adjust which part of the image to show and how tight or loose the crop is (with a fixed window, let us move the image around and maybe enlarge or
    shrink it to control what shows thru the window. Pinterest does a limited form of this, which is very useful in making the cover image relevant)
    4. Allow Cover Image to be ordered in different hierarchy (currently every element can be ordered differently except the Cover Image, it seems to be stuck
    in the 2nd spot, would like the option to set it on another spot in the layout. This one seems like an easy fix, since you guys allow that for every other
    element already)

    ReplyDelete