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Copyright Ellen Finkelstein, Inc. Do not copy or forward Instead, refer people to www.

1 Copyright Ellen Finkelstein, Inc. Do not copy or forward Instead, refer people to where they sign up for the training video series themselves 1

2 Finding and formatting images and shapes [Slide 1] In this training webinar, we ll cover ways to find and format images and shapes. I ll start with images, since that seems to be what most people struggle with, but formatting shapes is also important for diagrams and more. [Slide 2] I ll start with finding and formatting images technical how to s then move on to best practices that is, how to get great-looking results! After that, I ll cover formatting and best practices for shapes. Findimg Images [Slide 3] The first step for using images is to find them! You usually want photos, rather than line art, also known as clip art. Before going into web-based sources, I want to introduce you to a tip that many people don t know for using PowerPoint s own image library. This works in all versions of PowerPoint. I ll go into Normal view to show you. When you want to insert a photo, choose Insert (tab)>clip Art. The Clip Art task pane opens. It s a bad name, because it implies that it only includes clip art, that is line art; in fact, it contains thousands of photos. From the Results Should Be drop-down list, uncheck everything except Photographs. Then enter your keyword in the Search For box. Now, you ll get photographs. Try out a number of keywords; sometimes you need to think in terms of metaphors or just think outside the box. [Slide 4] For example, for a client who gives seminars on helping people decide their direction in life, I turned this slide into 2 slides. [Slides 5&6] You can find this photo by searching on the keyword, road. By the way, Microsoft provides its own photos and also contracts without outside photo companies to provide many more. For the second slide, I used shapes. In both slides, I matched the design of the client s website for the sake of branding. [Slide 7] But, there s something that needs explaining. To use a photo of a recognizable person for commercial use, you need that person s permission; this is called a model release. It doesn t necessarily have to be written, but if you think you could be sued, it s best to get a written release. My understanding, and I m not a lawyer, is that commercial use means that you re financially benefiting from the photo. So, if you re giving a sales presentation, that s commercial use. Also be aware that laws in other countries may differ from those in the United States. Microsoft complied with this and got permission; the people in the photos are models. When you use free photography sites, you don t know. But mostly, you won t find photos of people. There s an excellent Wikepdia article on model releases. It will also help you if you want to take your own photos. 2

3 [Slide 8] A word of warning whenever you get an image on the Internet, you need to check its license agreement. The license agreement determines your rights for using the photo. Luckily, most photo sites make that easy. Let me show you how to check out a photo s license agreement. [Slide 9] There are several other good sources for photos, both free and reasonably priced. After checking what Microsoft has, the site I go to most often is stock.xchng. This is a huge, welltrafficked site. It was just bought by Getty Images, which operates istockphoto; I hope they keep it open! You can upload your own photos, and find over 300,000 that you can use. The site is easy to search, as well. Let s search for road. Here you see the first page of pictures. At the top and bottom are links to istockphoto, which charges for photos. You can see that istockphoto has more photos that contain people. But stock.xchng has 50 pages of road photos! Let s check one out. You can hover over a photo to see it enlarged and then click to go to its page. Under the Availability heading, there s a link that you see a lot: Standard restrictions apply. It usually says that you can use the image: In digital format on websites, multimedia presentations, broadcast film and video, cell phones. In printed promotional materials, magazines, newspapers, books, brochures, flyers, CD/DVD covers, etc. Along with your corporate identity on business cards, letterhead, etc. To decorate your home, your office or any public place. This is what you want to see to use the photo for your presentation. It will also say that you can t use the photo: For pornographic, unlawful or other immoral purposes, for spreading hate or discrimination, or to defame or victimize other people, societies, cultures. To endorse products and services if it depicts a person. In a way that can give a bad name to SXC or the person(s) depicted on the Image. As part of a trademark, service mark or logo. SELLING AND REDISTRIBUTION OF THE IMAGE (INDIVIDUALLY OR ALONG WITH OTHER IMAGES) IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN! DO NOT SHARE THE IMAGE WITH OTHERS! It will tell you to ask permission from the photographer if you want to use the Image In website templates that you intend to sell or distribute. For creating printed reproductions that you intend to sell. On "print on demand" items such as t-shirts, postcards, mouse pads, mugs (e.g. on sites like Cafepress), or on any similar mass produced item that would contain the Image in a dominant way. 3

4 Some photographers want you to notify them if you use the photo in any way. Others want you to add attribution, that is, a caption mentioning the photographer s name. If you don t want to do so, don t use that photograph. Finally, it addresses the issue of the model release. Since SXC does NOT require a written Model Release for each Image that has identifiable people on it, We cannot guarantee that you will be able to use the Image for any purpose You like. Also, if there is a model release for the Image, We do not represent or make warranties whatsoever as to the legality or validity of it. There s more, but you can see that you could use this photo in your sales presentation. [Slide 10] Another great source of photos is Flikr, a popular photo-sharing site. By searching for photos that were posted with Creative Commons or Commercial licenses, you can find legal photos. Creative Commons is a way to create licenses that provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators. You can find out more at All Creative Commons licenses, even the most liberal, require attribution, so you would need to add it to a small text box on the slide. Let me show you how to find photos licensed under Creative Commons on Flikr: 1. Sign in or create an account. 2. Next to the Search box, click the word Search. 3. To the right of the Search box, click Advanced Search. 4. Type your search terms in the Search box and press Enter. 5. Choose Photos/Videos for the Content Type and Only Photos for the Media Type. 6. Scroll down and check the Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content check box. 7. Unless you re using the photo in a classroom or for some other non-commercial use and unless you don t want to be able to modify the photo, you should check the other two check boxes 8. Click the Search button. 9. Choose an image. 10. Click Actions> View all sizes. Then click Download to get the photo. 11. After you download it, change its name to something that describes the photo. You ll find loads of photographs, but don t expect people, for the reason we discussed earlier. When you click through to the photo, there s a License section, where you can check the license. One of the strange things about some of the photographers is that they don t put their real or full name on their account, so it s not easy to give them attribution. I think you can just put whatever name is at the upper right of the screen. I almost always record the URL where I found the photo. However, it doesn t have to be on the slide. You can add it to the Notes pane or put it in a text box and move that off the slide. In this way, you keep a record of where you got the photo, if someone should ask. [Slide 11] Public Domain is also a type of license that makes photos available for free and for any use. But they may also require attribution. Government websites such as those of NASA and 4

5 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are examples. I have a tip on these sites with links and other sources for free photos at Here you see a NASA photo of a sunset over South Africa taken from the space station. Beautiful, isn t it? [Slide 12] Let s move on to photos that aren t free. If you need a really top-quality photo or one with a recognizable person and are willing to pay $2 to $20 dollars or so, try istockphoto.com and bigstockphoto.com. You will immediately see that the quality is better than on the free sites. For istockphoto, either log in or sign up, enter your keywords, and choose Photos from the dropdown list in the Search box. Then press Enter. You may see a drop-down list, allowing you to fine-tune your search. This feature filters out irrelevant photos. For example, if you search for road, you may want an urban road and can choose that option. You ll get very different results! Each week, istockphoto offers a free photo. I used one of the free photos to test different sizes and how they appeared on a slide. How much do photos on istockphoto cost? istockphoto works on a credit system. You buy credits and then use them on photos. 50 credits costs $75. Photos vary in the number of credits they cost, but many go for 10 credits for a medium photo and 15 credits for a large photo. So $75 wold buy 50 credits, which is 5 10-credit medium photos. That works out to $15 per photo. I did some testing and found that medium was the minimum acceptable size for a photo to cover the entire slide. Smaller sizes got grainy when I enlarged them. Large is better, but the difference is hard to see. How about bigstockphoto? Their medium photos are generally 2 credits and you can buy 50 credits for $98. That gives you 49 2-credit photos. That works out to $2 per photo, much less expensive than istockphoto. They also let you buy one photo at a time. If you buy fewer credits with either site, the photos cost more per photo. My upcoming Outstanding Presentations Portal will have a library of photos. [Slide 13] You can always ask permission for an image that you find elsewhere, if you have the time to wait for an answer. For the webinar on animation techniques, I needed a before and after photo and found these two on someone s website. There was a phone number and I called her and she gave me permission. It was as simple at that. [Slide 14] Take your own photos! I highly recommend taking your own photos if you can. You can often create just the content that you want. When you travel, look for photos that might suit your needs. I took this in India in 2008; I love it and use it often as an example. [Slide 15] Here s another example, I could use this photo of a forest staircase in a presentation about a difficult road ahead or a difficult challenge. I took this on a family vacation in 2005 at Sam A. Baker Park in Missouri. 5

6 [Slide 16] Photo Formatting Once you have your photo, you often need to format it. [Slide 17] In PowerPoint 2007 & 2010, the Image Gallery has great 1-click options. In the same Picture Styles group, use Picture Border to change the border (color and weight) and Picture Layout (which adds captions, a little like SmartArt). The advanced editing in 2007 & 2010 is accessed by clicking Picture Effects. Shadow: Start with the presets & then click Shadow Options for custom controls. I have more tips about shadows at and Reflection: You have 9 options, but you can click Reflection Options for more finetuning. Glow: Adds a soft blurry color around the image. You can click More Glow Colors and Glow Options at the bottom of the gallery for fine-tuning. Soft Edges: Blurs the edges of the photo: Click Soft Edges Options to more precisely specify the amount of blue. Bevel: Creates a 3D edge. Choose from presets or click 3-D Options to fine tune. 3D Rotation: Rotates the object in 3D space. Sometimes, you need to do this to fully see the 3D effects you create in the 3-D Options category. Choose 3-D Rotation Options to separately rotate in the X, Y and Z directions. In 2007 and 2010, the entire Adjust section offers more editing options. PowerPoint 2007 offers color corrections, brightness and contrast. (In 2003, Picture toolbar has Brightness and Contrast settings.) 2010 has Sharpen and Soften (click Corrections). This lets you blur or sharpen a photo. Artistic Effects, which are like Photoshop s filters, offer more creative options. Photo Best Practices [Slide 18] Three principles will help you get the best look for your photos: make them large, crop them, and remove the background. [Slide 19] Make images large! One of the principles I write about in my ebook, 7 Steps to Great Images, is making images large. Little images have less impact. When looking for a photo, make sure that it isn t too small. You can select a photo and enlarge it by dragging outward on one of the corner handles. Always use the corner handles to avoid distorting the photo! But you don t want to enlarge a photo too much because it will become grainy and will look like a very poor quality photograph. [Slide 20} Just by making them bigger, you increase their power. 6

7 [Slide 21] What size is the right size? In istockphoto, the medium size is 1698x1131 or thereabouts. In bigstockphoto, it s 1600x1066. These are large enough to not look grainy on your slide. But how will they fit? Sometimes you ll want a vertical photo, like the forest staircase I just showed you. Other times, you ll want to take up the entire slide or just the space below the slide title. I ll talk about cropping in a minute, but now I want to talk about aspect ratio. Let s say that you want to cover the entire slide. By default, slides are 10 inches wide by 7.5 inches high. You can see that by going to Design>Page Setup. In 2003, choose File> Page Setup. You ll also see that the default slide ratio for an on-screen show is 4:3. This is the standard ratio of width to height for projectors and computer monitors. You can choose a wide-screen option either 16:9 or 16:10. Let s assume you re using the default 4:3. When you download a photo from a site, you ll see the dimensions in pixels. Or, if you have the photo on your computer, you can find the dimensions by hovering over the file in Windows Explorer or by right-clicking, choosing Properties and looking on the Details tab. [Slide 22] Most photos aren t in the ratio of 4:3. In fact, most are 4x6, or we could say it the other way, 6:4, which is 3:2. So to fit the photo to cover a slide, you ll need to crop a side. Here s how I do it: 1. I drag a corner handle until the photo covers the entire slide. You could be making the photo smaller or larger. 2. In this case, the photo is too wide. 3. I move it down a notch, using the down arrow key, so I can see where the slide is. 4. I move the photo to where I want it on the slide. In this situation, I need to move it to the right so I don t cut off the tail of the stingray. 5. Crop on or both both sides. In PowerPoint 2010, I find that I have to click off the image to finish the cropping operation. 6. Use the Up arrow key to move the photo back up. 7. Click anywhere off the photo to deselect it. Of course, a photo doesn t have to take up the entire slide, but the principle of dragging by the corner and cropping works for many situations. Crop images [Slide 23] Another technique to increase the power of images is to crop them. Here s a photo I took of a New York City subway in It looks good; it isn t really small. [Slide 24] Now look at the same photo after cropping. By cropping out the top and the bottom, I make the subway look much closer, so it s more powerful. Always remove unnecessary area around the main focus of attention and try to rebalance the photo. That means that the focus is where you want it to be so you draw your audience s attention where you want it to be. [Slide 25] Make the background transparent/remove background 7

8 Let s go back to the lion. Do you see how the background looks awkward? The rectangle shape of the photo has no relation to the shape or size of the slide. A great technique for a photo with one strong focus is to remove the background. If the background is a solid color (I had a perfectly gray sky in London), use this technique: 1. Select the picture. 2. Choose Format tab> Adjust group> Recolor drop-down list> Set Transparent Color. (In 2003, choose Set Transparent Color from the Picture toolbar.) You'll see a special cursor. 3. Click anywhere on your solid background. The background becomes transparent. (In 2003, there s a button on the Picture toolbar.) If the background is not a solid color, you can use PowerPoint 2010 s Background Removal tool, a tip that I have on my website called Crop around an image, ( or an outside program like Photoshop. I have a video tutorial on the Background Removal tool on YouTube at [Slide 26] Formatting Shapes [Slide 27 & 28] Investigate all the types of shapes. Some have a yellow diamond that lets you adjust their parameters. Create your own shapes with freeforms. You ll find freeform in the Basic Shapes section. To create a line, click at the line s start and end point; to draw, drag with the mouse. You just continue to create segments in this way. To close the freeform, double-click near the beginning. In all versions, you can group shapes. In PowerPoint 2007 and 2010, you can select 2 or more objects and press Ctrl+G to group or select a grouped object and press Ctrl+Shift+G to ungroup. In all versions, you can group and ungroup by right-clicking and choosing from the menu. In 2010 only, you can combine shapes. These tools aren t on the ribbon. To add them to the Quick Access toolbar, do the following: 1. Click the down arrow at the right end of the Quick Access toolbar (which is at the upperleft corner of the PowerPoint window). 2. Choose More Commands. 3. In the Choose Commands From drop-down list, choose Commands Not in the Ribbon. 4. Scroll down to the 4 commands that start with Shape 5. Select them and click Add. 6. Click OK. Here are the 4 combine shapes tools: 1. Union adds 2 shapes together 2. Subtract removes a second shape from a first. You must select them in the proper order. 3. Intersect removes all but the overlap between 2 shapes 4. Combine leaves all but the overlap. 8

9 The shape style gallery is similar to the one for images, but has fewer options. The Shape Effects list is just like the one for images. You can change the fill of a shape. Most interesting are gradient and picture fills. With the shape selected, on the Format tab, choose Shape Fill> Gradient or Shape Fill> Picture. Transparency is often used by designers, especially for overlays, that is, fills for textboxes. Right-click a shape and choose Format Shape. In the Fill section of the dialog box, drag the Transparency slider to get the result that you want. You can also create a transparency gradient. That means that the transparency varies from one side to the other. It gives a very professional look. An advanced technique is editing points to create curves. Select a shape, and on the Format tab, choose Edit Shape> Edit Points. Click a point to display 2 lines ending in a box. Drag a box up or down to create a gradual curve. It s called a Bézier curve. [Slide 29] Best practices Choose a treatment and stick to it throughout the presentation; you might even want to choose a treatment and stick to it for all your presentations to create branding a recognizable look. This is especially important for 3D looks, including shadows, bevels and 3D rotation Make sure that text on these shapes is legible don t overdo it! [Slide 30] Create a sampler slide A sampler slide contains treatments of shapes, text and images that you want to use throughout a presentation. You can then use the Format Painter button on the Home tab to copy formatting that way you don t have to create your formatting from scratch on each slide. Bonus: I have many tips in my blog with specific techniques for formatting shapes:

10 [Slide 31] Summary 1. Photos: How to find them 2. Photos: How to format them 3. Photos: Best practices 4. Shapes: How to format them 5. Shapes: Best practices Be sure to download the PowerPoint file so you can play with the formatting that I did. Have fun formatting our images and photos! 10

TECHNOTravel. For Microsoft Word & PowerPoint 2010 Student Workbook. TECHNOeBooks Project-based Computer Curriculum ebooks.

TECHNOTravel. For Microsoft Word & PowerPoint 2010 Student Workbook. TECHNOeBooks Project-based Computer Curriculum ebooks. TECHNOTravel For Microsoft Word & PowerPoint 2010 Student Workbook TECHNOeBooks Project-based Computer Curriculum ebooks www.bepublishing.com Copyright 1993 2010. TechnoKids Inc. in partnership with B.E.