How to make a picture transparent in PowerPoint?

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With the proper text and images, basic PowerPoint presentations aren’t quite enough effort anymore to catch a viewer’s attention. While they might be getting the information needed from the presentation, people are unimpressed by bland, colorless, flat presentations.

With such advanced technology available today, people now want to see PowerPoint presentations displaying a level of skill and thoughtfulness regarding design. One of these design skills to utilize in your next PowerPoint presentation is how to make a picture transparent.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn the basic steps to make a picture transparent in PowerPoint.

Make picture transparent PowerPoint

  1. With the picture or shape selected, click on the “Format” icon at the top of your screen or right-click on the shape, and select the option “Format shape.” Under this option, click on the “picture” icon.
Choose format picture

2. Choose section “Picture Transparency” and correct Transparency.

To change the transparency of picture

Changing the transparency of a picture (another way)

  1. First, select the image you wish to alter.
  2. Then click on “Insert” in the toolbar at the top of your screen.
Add new shape

3. Under insert, move down to the “Shape” option. Then, go over to the different shape options and click on the shape that would best overlap with your image.

4. Once you’ve decided on a shape, resize the shape to match the size of the image.

Draw new shape and change border

5. With the shape selected, click on the “Format” icon at the top of your screen.

6. Under the option “Shape outline,” select the option “no outline.”

7. After you’ve made this change, right-click on the shape, and select the option “Format shape.” Under this option, click on the paint bucket “fill” icon.

8. Then a window will appear. In this window, you’ll choose the “picture or texture.”

Change colour shape

9. This option will allow you to fill the shape with an image of your choice.

Click Format shape menu

10. Once you’ve inserted the image of your choosing, click on the image, and then use the transparency slider provided to change the picture’s opacity.

Change the transparency

Changing multiple images

Do you have more than one image within your presentation that you would like to alter? One simple way to change multiple images within the same slide is by grouping them.

To group two or more images in PowerPoint, follow these steps:

  1. Hold the shift key while clicking on the pictures you want to group. In this case, the images you wish to alter to the transparency.
  2. Right-click over the cluster of images.
  3. Go down to the “Group” option and select it to group the chosen pictures.

With your images grouped, you can follow steps 7 to 10 of “Changing the Transparency of a Picture” to change the cluster’s transparency. Grouping images will make it easier to change transparency by slide but remember you can’t cluster images between slides.

With your new skill

Knowing how to change the transparency of images, though an easy skill to master, can drastically change your presentation’s design. Besides changing the different opacity levels of pictures, you could also expand the image and change the transparency to make your PowerPoint slide’s background.

With small alterations like this, your PowerPoint design can stand out from the basic, boring presentations everyone else is making.

Stacy M.
About the author:Stacy M.
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