You often see elaborately designed slide backgrounds with interesting and diverse motifs in PowerPoint presentations. We'll show you how to quickly create an attractive background yourself.

The principle is simple and can be applied in many ways:

• Choose a suitable photo from your own (holiday) photo collection. Almost any photo with relatively "quiet" areas will work.
• Insert it onto a slide.
• Select the appropriate section and cut away anything unnecessary.
• Enlarge the section to fit the slide.
• Or copy the photo and paste it using > right -click > format background > picture or texture fill from the > clipboard – done!

With the image editing tools > Color, > Corrections and > Artistic Effects, you can enhance your image in a variety of ways and individually according to your wishes or adapt it to your color design after cutting and enlarging it.

These are very practical as photo templates:

• Walls, stone and wooden structures, etc.
• Sand, soil, etc.
• Moss, meadow, tree bark
• Clouds, sky, water
• Concrete metaphors such as grain, forest, grass and other textures

Since these are always very small sections, the original structures are generally no longer visible.

Example 1

A) A typical photo of the beach serves as a template.

B) This area should be cut out.

TIP: Create a (reduced-size) frame that roughly matches the dimensions of the foil. When you crop the photo, the cutting edges will snap onto this frame!

This is what the finished cutout looks like.

C) This is what the finished cutout looks like.

The next image shows the enlarged section at slide size.

A) Here, the image has not been enhanced with any additional image tool effects.

B) Bright areas add extra excitement to the overall picture.

Now, some sample texts are also displayed, giving a realistic impression of the new background in combination with slide content.

Example 2

In this case, sand structures are to be achieved as a background.

A) The original photo.

B) The desired section.

C) Cut out completely.

A) This is what the image looks like in foil size.

B) Sometimes, the image contains elements that still resemble a realistic photograph. You should avoid this to ensure a truly neutral background. Especially if (distinct) shadows are visible, this can look unfortunate.

In this case, the entire action is performed a second time in the enlarged section.

A) The photo shown above has been additionally overlaid with a bluish tint.

B) A new section was defined.

Now the overall impression looks even more nebulous.

A) The (new) enlarged section again in blue.

B) Remember that you can change the color yourself via > Picture Tools / Format in the Effect Options > Color in the Picture Tools and thus create color nuances that exactly match your corporate design.

Depending on the color of your background, you will of course need to coordinate your color choice with the text on the slide.

Example 3

Depending on the topic and occasion of your presentation, you can also create more expressive versions. It is particularly helpful to create basic patterns using the > Artistic Effects feature .

In the next case, a photograph with seashells was used as a basis.

A) The original photo.

B) Here you can see the selected section again.

C) The section is enlarged to fit the film and given an artistic effect.

The next image shows the slide with text examples. The background contrast and color have also been slightly modified. As you can see, you have almost unlimited possibilities here to design your own unique background.

Example 4

In exceptional cases, you can deliberately use the background if it fits the content or occasion of the presentation. In the last example, the theme of "religion," symbolized by the arch of a church portal, was used intentionally.

A) The base photo.

B) The section is drawn again.

C) The section itself.

A) The following image shows the final result. As with the other examples, the section was enlarged, the colors changed, and an artistic effect added. The text has been adapted to the relatively dark background and is displayed in white.

Have fun and good luck trying it out!