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Glen Millar
Communications

Welcome to PowerPoint WorkBench

 


 

 


Welcome to these tutorials, many of which were unique concepts when first published!

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Visualize: techniques to visualize your presentation

artistic clip art ] crop image multi-ways ] camtasia capture ] color schemes ] connectors ] connectors 2 ] connectors 3 ] connectors 4 ] natural art ] perspector 1 ] perspector 2 ] powerpoint to word ] ppt diagrams in word ] rolled 3d images ] slideshow on desktop ] transparent images ] unbelievable 3d ] [ wrap around ] awesome image fills ] search-clip-art ] super compress presentation ]


Wrapping Images in PowerPoint

Why?

Use PowerPoint's drawing tools and Grid to customize an autoshape with an image background.

Well, here is where we are heading! This, by the way, was done for PowerPoint Live, in October, so you can get an idea of what you are in for at this magical event! But don't fret if you missed it, it is on again this year!

finished image

This is an image as the background to a custom drawn autoshape. So, how was it done?

grids and guides dialogue box

First, you need to display your drawing guides. I access them by the keyboard combination of <Control + G>. Or you can go View | Grids and Guides. Select "Display drawing guides on screen".

guides on the screen

You will end up with a couple of Guides that probably meet in the middle. If you click on one, and provided there is no actual object or image there to get in your way, you can drag them. Holding the <Control> key while you drag will produce a duplicate one. This works for both horizontal and vertical ones. In our case, we want three horizontal and three vertical. Now, I am not going to worry about the actual numbers of where they are. That's because mine are set in centimeters, and yours may be inches. But you need them "roughly" where mine are.

OK...

lines tear off menu

On the Drawing toolbar, we select, Autoshapes | Lines, and the "Freeform" button.

freeform selector button

Then we start drawing our shape.

drawing the sequence

Now, we start in the top left hand corner, clicking once everywhere I have a number. You of course realize we are starting at number 1 <g>?

Anyway we will end up with six actual dots. The last one (back at number six) is where we double click to finish the shape. This is covered, by the way, in areas of this site.

edit points menu

We then right click on the newly drawn shape, and select "Edit Points". What we will now do is turn two of our drawn points into "Corner Points".

drawing the shape

We first select the top, middle point (# 6) and drag it down to the apex of our previously set, top guide. We do the same for point # 3. Then we right click on the actual point (# 6) , and find we get a different menu.

corner point menu

We select "Corner Point". Notice two little handles that suddenly appear.

apex points

We need to drag the end of the handle at the left side down to the apex of the guides, as shown in the next image. You can tell by now that we deliberately set those Guides where they are to use their intersections as locations where we could accurately drag drawing handles to!

drawing handles

If we do that for both sides, we will get a nice rounded shape.

rounded effect

Doing that top and bottom, but only for the middle points 3 and 6 will produce the base for our wrap around image. 

We then add a picture fill, and get rid of the outside line.

format autoshape menu

picture fill dialogue box

final result

Time now to turn off the guides, again by <Control + G>. Now remember, this is just a FRACTION of what you might have learnt if you had attended PowerPoint Live last year. But don't fret, it is on again!

PowerPoint Live Details

© Glen Millar

Last Updated: April 02, 2005
 


  

 

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