Apply a background image captured from the Web
Did you ever want to utilize a cool picture that you had as a background for you slides? You tried to insert it, but then you realized that the strong color contrast did not allow you to type any text on top of the image, and you did not know what font color to use to have it displayed in a readable way.
There is something we can do to have a picture as a background and still be able to read the text we place on top of it.
Before explaining in detail what you have to do, I'd like to remind you a few tricks to insert images into your slides.
- If you have your picture on your hard disk, in a floppy or on a network drive, the best way is to:
1) go to Insert >> Picture >> From File... and then browse your folders to locate and select the picture you want to insert
2) click "Insert" and it's done
- If you find a nice photo on the Internet and you want to use it for your presentation, you can do one the following:
a) right-click on the image and choose "Save Picture As". This way you are going to store the picture and you can insert it at any time using the classical method seen above
b) right-click and choose "Copy" (option available only if you have Internet Explorer). Doing this, you can then paste this image on your slide right away, just pressing "Ctrl+V" or choosing Edit >> Paste
c) press the "Print Screen" key on the top right of your keyboard and then go back to the slide and press "Ctrl+V" to paste the image. This is called "screenshot", and it allows you to paste into PowerPoint anything that you have displayed on your screen.
By doing any of the previous steps, you will be able to insert a picture on any slide. In case you want the image to appear on all the slides, as a background, you have to insert it on the Slide Master (View >> Master >> Slide Master).
Here's the trick to resolve the issue of readability of the text on top of a picture.
Once you have pasted your image either on a single slide or on the Master Slide, follow these steps:
a) click on the picture to select it
b) go to View >> Toolbars >> Picture, and be sure to display the Picture toolbar
c) here click on the second icon from the left, "Image Control"
d) choose the last option in the drop-down menu, "Watermark".
Your picture will be set as watermark, that is, you will still be able to see the shapes on the image but all the colors will be muted and lightened, so you will be able to use any dark color (blue, brown, black, green) to type text on top of the image.
If you want to obtain a perfect watermarked picture, after having applied the "watermark" effect try to increase or decrease the Color Contrast and the Color Brightness (using the apposite icons on the Picture toolbar) until you find the right combination.
In this paragraph we have seen so far how we can use images that we find on the Web. What about nice backgrounds? When browsing the Web, have you ever found a Web site with a nice background? Maybe you have also thought that it would have been nice to be able to use that exact background in your presentation.
It is definitely possible, and I will explain you the proper way to do it.
First of all, let me remind you the difference between a picture you can find on a Web page and the background itself of the Web page: you can be sure that what you are right-clicking on is a picture if you see the option "Save Picture As...". Otherwise, if the image is a background, as you right-click on it you will see the option: "Save Background As..."
The main difference is that an image can be inserted into PowerPoint and then manually stretched to cover the entire slide; a background needs to be inserted using a different way, since the image used as the background can be difficulty stretched manually.
Moreover, remember that some images or backgrounds may be copyright-protected. In any case, if you want to be honest and respectful, find the email of the Webmaster - usually at the bottom of the page - and write him/her an email asking permission to reproduce the image for non-commercial use. Most of the times he/she won't even waste his/her time to answer you, but at least you won't be liable for anything).
Once you find a Web site whose background you like (I can suggest you to try with these ones:
http://www.usal.es - the Home Page of the University of Salamanca, in Spain, and http://www.vatican.va - the official Home Page of Vatican State) do the following:
a) right-click on the background (be sure you are not clicking on a single image, you need to right-click exactly on a portion of background)
b) choose "Save Background As..."
c) save it anywhere you like (e.g. in your preferred folder)
Now, open your PowerPoint and:
a) select Format >> Background
b) click on the little down arrow in the "Background Fill"
c) select "Fill Effects"
d) click on the last tab, "Picture"
e) click where it says: "Select Picture..."
f) browse your folders to locate the background you have previously saved
g) once you find it, select it and click "Insert"
h) click "OK" on the Picture tab
i) click "Apply to all" on the Background box and it's done.
The nice background you found on the Internet is now displayed in all your slides.
You can read this article in the original issue of MasterView.
