Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Make the selected part of a picture transparent to either cleverly crop parts of the picture, or make parts of the picture transparent to overlay in front of other pictures without obscuring them.
Lesson versions
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Exercise files
Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ PowerPoint presentations from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Remove Picture Backgrounds.pptx251.3 KB Remove Picture Backgrounds - Completed.pptx
998.6 KB
Quick reference
Topic
Removing the background from pictures.
When to use
To overlay images without obscuring objects behind them.
Instructions
- Select the picture, click the Format tab, and then click Remove Background.
- The square or rectangular marquee (used to select parts of an image) helps you focus on the part of the picture that you want to keep.
- You can Mark Areas to Keep either as a single dot or as a line drawn with the pointer.
- You can Mark Areas to Remove the background either as a single dot or as a line drawn with the pointer.
- You can delete a mark by clicking Delete Mark and selecting the mark.
- You can discard or keep all changes.
Also note:
Click the slide outside the selected image or the Keep Changes button to finalize the changes. The changes can also be undone at a later time by selecting the picture, clicking the Format tab, and then clicking Reset Picture.
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- 00:03 This video is about a tool in PowerPoint that allows you to remove the background
- 00:07 of pictures, and the easiest way to find that option is to click on a picture,
- 00:11 the Format tab of the ribbon, and
- 00:13 in the adjust group is the Remove Background button.
- 00:16 So I click on that, immediately a marquee line with handles is applied to that
- 00:20 picture, which is this little rectangular box here.
- 00:23 And the pink areas that are actually the masked areas,
- 00:27 that will form the transparency.
- 00:29 Now I can grab the marquee box itself and position that on the slide,
- 00:32 as well as adjusting the handles.
- 00:35 And I'm going to focus on this particular gentleman who's writing on the whiteboard.
- 00:38 So as much as I can do with this particular marquee
- 00:41 set of lines, the better.
- 00:43 However, notice there's still a little bit of the ladies head available, so
- 00:47 holding the control key on the keyboard, and the scroll wheel of the mouse,
- 00:51 I zoom in a little bit.
- 00:54 We can mark the areas to keep, if we wish, we can mark areas to remove.
- 00:59 I click on the button and my mouse turns into a little pencil,
- 01:02 so I can either click and draw a line dragging the mouse, or, in fact,
- 01:07 I can do a single-click and draw a little dot and keep working around on that image
- 01:11 until I'm actually happy that I've got the result that I want.
- 01:15 And with a little bit of trial and error, it will eventually get fairly close.
- 01:19 Now, I'm fairly happy with that.
- 01:21 If I wanted to delete one these marks,
- 01:23 I could, in fact, click the Delete Mark button, or I could discard all changes.
- 01:28 But as I said, I'm happy with that, so I click Keep All Changes, or
- 01:33 even just simply click off the picture and
- 01:35 PowerPoint sets that image ,in terms of the work that's been done.
- 01:38 So I use the control key on the keyboard and the scroll wheel of the mouse, zoom
- 01:42 that down a little bit, and so there is our picture with the background removed.
- 01:46 Now I'm going to combine these pictures in a very clever little artistic effect.
- 01:51 So I will select that picture, go to the Format tab,
- 01:55 Artistic Effects, and Pencil Sketch.
- 01:59 Select both images on the slide by going Ctrl+A on the keyboard, the Format tab,
- 02:04 Align button, notice Align to Slide, Align Middle.
- 02:10 Now there was no movement in the pictures because they are indeed already aligned to
- 02:14 the middle of the slide, Align Center, and
- 02:18 there we go, except the picture that I just did a little work on has disappeared.
- 02:22 Now one of the really cool things about PowerPoint is that pictures and
- 02:25 objects on a slide can appear in layers.
- 02:28 So this picture is on top of a picture that I worked on.
- 02:31 So if I right-click on that, Send to Back,
- 02:34 I can send backward a little bit if I have multiple objects, but Send to Back, and
- 02:39 there our marquee and mask transparent picture has popped up to the front.
- 02:44 That's a very cool effect.
- 02:46 Now it's a little bit fuzzy along the edge there.
- 02:48 So PowerPoint is not a totally high end graphic program, but it's not too bad,
- 02:53 and we could do a little bit more work to refine that.
- 02:56 So remember the tool to remove backgrounds of pictures, it's very simple to use and
- 03:00 you get this marquee line with handles,
- 03:03 the pink area is the area that will be transparent because that's the mask.
- 03:08 You can mark areas to keep, or remove, or delete marks.
- 03:12 And simply click off the slide.
- 03:15 Now I'm going to go Ctrl+Z, which will undo the last effect that I applied,
- 03:19 because I'm not very happy with that.
- 03:22 Remember, also that not only can you undo, but you can also select the particular
- 03:26 picture and reset that back to its original format.
- 03:29 So it's a very useful tool to use and
- 03:31 you need to experiment with it to get the effect that you desire.
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