PowerPoint 2007: Editing Your Photos

Most people would agree that PowerPoint is a great tool for creating stunning photo slideshows. Creating a slideshow by “Import and Export” may be the common way used, but with enhanced graphic ability in PowerPoint 2007, you have more easy-to-use features to edit and customise photos.

In this article, we will talk about some clever tips to use PowerPoint 2007 as a photo editor rather than simply a slideshow maker.

1. Image Borders
Using different styles of borders around the edges of images makes them catch more attention from the audience. PowerPoint gives you handy access to create interesting borderlines for your images. You can change line colour, weight and style.

First, insert an image to a PowerPoint slide.
PowerPoint 2007 -> Insert Ribbon -> Image Icon
Browse to your picture folder; insert an image for editing.

Second, click the image and then go to the Format Tab.
Format Tab-> Picture Border
Under Picture Border, select a theme colour, choose a line weight and then find the line dash style you want.

When done, you will see a line border around your image.

2. Image Frames
Something like image borders, frames also easily spruce up your image. PowerPoint offers a beautiful frame gallery to choose for your image.

When you insert an image, click the picture to activate the Format Tab. Then you can see the Frame Gallery in that tab. You can select a Picture Style from the gallery and apply a frame, shadow, 3-D rotation and other effects to your selected images.

3. Re-colour an Image If you are a Publisher user, you should have experienced with the re-colour feature. In PowerPoint 2007, you can do it in much the same way.

When you select a picture, you can find the Recolor Tool in the Format Tab of the Picture Tool. You can apply the colour style you want to your image, from Dark to Light variations.

4. Create Auto-shaped Images The next good thing with PowerPoint 2007 is that you can change the shape of any image. Your image can be resized into any of the auto shapes available. You have a lot of variations, from basic to complicated.

5. Add a Theme A PowerPoint template gives your presentation a uniform look and feel. That is the same reason we use a theme for our photo slideshow.

A theme not only gives a colour scheme to your photo slideshow it also formats fonts, effects and background styles. Once you specify a theme, all the elements in the slideshow will be changed to match that theme. If you are not satisfied with the colour scheme, more theme colour options are available for you choose from so you are able to create a theme in different colour scheme. Of course, you can even change the fonts and effects of a theme.

With these tips to create a wonderful photo slideshow, you may now like to expand its audience by publishing to web. Here are some tips to share a PowerPoint slideshow on the web with success.

1. To save as an HTML webpage (static slideshow):
   PowerPoint 2007->Save As -> Web Page
2. To convert to a Flash slideshow for sharing on a blog or a webpage (animated slideshow), see:
   http://www.sameshow.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3926#3926
3. Specify the default fonts for Web-Based Slideshow
4. Change the title for a Web-Based Slideshow
5. Change the target screen resolution for Web-Based Slideshow
6. Optimise Your Slideshow for a specific browser