Image Editing in PowerPoint | Part 2/5

Bildbearbeitung in PowerPoint – Wissensstufe 2

Image editing in PowerPoint – Knowledge level 2

March 31, 2015|Tom Schweitzer

Two of the most fundamental image editing techniques must of course be included in this series of posts on our blog. This article covers the following topics:

Create your own photo clip art using the "Cut Out" feature
Combining photos with standard shapes

Create your own photo clip art using the "Cut Out" feature

First, some basic information:

The more contrast-rich, sharper, and more color-intensive a photo is, the better and faster individual elements can be isolated.
The more uniform in color and blurry a photo is, the more work and time you have to invest to isolate an element; often these results are not really optimal.

Furthermore, it is also a personal question of the desired standard, because if a cut-out object is shown very small, is only visible briefly or lies against an indistinct background, this is significantly relevant to the quality and effort of your work. You should use automatic background removal for photos that have clear areas of color and a background of as uniform a color as possible - otherwise PowerPoint cannot recognize what needs to be isolated. In the first example, the background is relatively neutral, and there are no bright colors outside the ceramic bowl that could interfere with the automatic process. The purple areas cover everything correctly and are isolated (see right image). Simple, quick, and a good result.

Automatic adjustments are quickly overwhelmed by unclear image elements and highly differentiated image parts. In this example, you would have to do a lot of manual editing.

Work in small steps. This way, you can still achieve good results even with post-processing. After clicking the cropping tool, a frame appears, and the elements that would be removed are highlighted in purple. At this point, it's often sufficient to look at the slide overview on the left to get a first impression, as you can already see the finished result there.

Improvements can often be achieved simply by slightly shifting the frame's dimensions in one direction or the other.

Although the background is relatively textured, it appears as a "gray area," and the automatic cutout of this lamp works quite well. The first automatic cutout is visible on the left of the image. By moving the frame and making minor adjustments, the result on the right of the image becomes more appealing, and the lamp is completely isolated. A red rectangle is placed behind the lamps for clarity. With the two tools > Mark areas to keep and > Mark areas to remove, you have the option of editing even the smallest details, possibly with strong magnification.

When working in very small areas, it often happens that other new areas emerge that you didn't actually want to keep. It's worth taking a moment to think about this, because correcting unwanted results can be very time-consuming and lead to constant back and forth. Sometimes it's better to leave small imperfections (red arrow) as they are, since they won't be noticeable at all in the final presentation. Once the background has been removed, you've easily created a photo clip art image. You can use this method to create your own company clip art for product information, advertising, or depictions of individual device parts. For further processing, it can sometimes be helpful to crop the overall dimensions of the finished image slightly. Inserting images into standard shapes You can insert a photo or graphic into any standard form and then edit it using all the available graphic formatting tools. However, a fundamental problem arises due to the different proportions or aspect ratios into which the photo is inserted, resulting in distortion.

Depending on the size, the aspect ratios are adjusted accordingly. However, you can influence the distortion.

Possibilities with the combination of shapes

Starting with version 2010, PowerPoint has a new feature : > Drawing Tools > Combine Shapes . This can also be used if you have inserted a photo into the shape. You can use this feature to crop or remove parts of the shape. For example, select two overlapping shapes, and when you use > Subtract Shapes, the corresponding portion will be removed.

Note: When combining shapes, the first click determines the result. In the top image, the shape with the photo was clicked first. In the bottom image, the circle is clicked first.

This technique also works with 3D shapes:

This suggests that you can also use this method to precisely "cut out" shapes from the photos. Use > Shapes > Sketch to draw a line around the bus. Correct or delete individual points as needed for a clean representation. This part will then be subtracted accordingly (the incorrect version is shown in the middle). Since the fill is normally adjusted to the shape's dimensions, the photo is displayed entirely within the new, smaller shape (second image from the right). You can now adjust the values for > Offset and > Scale under > Format Picture > Fill so that the bus fills the shape. Alternatively, you can check the box for > Arrange images side-by-side as a texture and perhaps fine-tune the values mentioned above to ensure the bus fits correctly.

However, you will find that it takes some time before experience allows you to work quickly! With enough practice, though, you will certainly soon achieve this.

Photos in shapes as an agenda

Many layouts could be shown on this topic. This example is intended to briefly demonstrate the visual effect – you have certainly learned the technique by now through the previous steps.