PowerPoint Basics Tutorial 3: Graphics In this tutorial we’ll be looking at graphics, and the various types of illustrations that can be included in a presentation, with special focus on clip art and shapes. On the following slides we’ll practise the following skills:  Moving, rotating, resizing and cropping pictures and clip art;  Multiple selection of graphics;  Managing layers on slides;  Grouping and aligning objects;  Managing graphic colours, brightness, contrast and colour transparency;  Creating customised graphics and saving them for future use. Go to the next slide in this tutorial. Pictures are usually photos or images with a lot of detail and colour. They may take up a lot of memory in your presentation, and may not always appear well especially if scaled up from small images. We’ve talked about pictures (and photo albums) in our Slide Show project. Clip Art usually consists of line art, drawings and diagrams. It may not be as detailed as real-life photos, but it can be scaled up or down without losing much detail and does not take up much memory. Shapes are practically basic figures that you can use to build up your own diagrams in PowerPoint. They can be saved as clip art images for use in other presentations or applications. We’ve already explored some basic shapes in Tutorial 1.

You’re now on Slide 2 Tutorial 3 – Graphics Let us first work with some graphics. We’ll work with one of the photos we used in the Slide Show in Tutorial 1. 1.Load one of the photos in the Sample Pictures folder (Autumn Leaves should do). Resize it proportionally to fit into the space on the right. 2.Click once on the picture to highlight it. Notice the rotation handle protruding from the top of the frame (a small green ball). Move the pointer over it. It changes into a circular arrow. Click and hold the mouse button, and move to the left or right. 3.While the picture is highlighted, click on the Format tab to see more options, especially the Arrange and Size tools (far right of the Ribbon). 4.The Rotate menu enables you to rotate the picture any angle you want. 5.The Crop tool can enable you to cut off parts of the picture, and show only the part you want. Move the side and corner handles inwards until you frame only that part you want visible. Notice that cropping is not the same as resizing. Go to the next slide in this tutorial.

You’re now on Slide 3 Tutorial 3 – Graphics The Arrange tools in the Format tab enable us to do a number of things with graphics. 1.Load two other pictures from the Sample Pictures folder. Resize them to about 30% and place them in the space on the right. Overlap the pictures. Notice that the last picture you loaded will cover part of the first picture. This is because it is on a higher layer. 2.Click on the bottom picture, and click Bring to Front. Now the first picture is on top. Send to Back has the opposite effect, sending a higher level object to a lower level. 3.Click on one of the pictures, and select the Align menu. Make sure Align to Slide is switched on, and experiment with the various alignments available. 4.Highlight both pictures by dragging across both pictures, or clicking on each consecutively while holding the CTRL key. 5.Click on the Group button. Now the pictures make part of a group. Move them around, resize the group, rotate, etc. To work on the pictures separately again select the Ungroup option. Go to the next slide in this tutorial.

You’re now on Slide 4 Tutorial 3 – Graphics The Selection Pane button will open a Selection and Visibility task pane. If there are a lot of objects on the slide this will help you make heads or tails of the various layers. You can also temporarily hide layers while working on others. 1.Make sure the Selection and Visibility task pane is open. Click on the whale and turtle pictures respectively and see the items highlighted in the Shapes list. 2.Click over the eye icon of one of the shapes. Toggle its visibility. 3.Highlight one of the pictures only, and Re-order its layer by using the Up or Down buttons at the bottom of the pane. 4.Group the two pictures, and observe what happens in the task pane. 5.Ungroup the pictures. 6.Enlarge the picture on the highest layer so that it completely covers the smaller picture. You will be unable to click on the hidden picture at this point. 7.Click on the number of the hidden picture in the task pane. Notice what happens. Bring it to the front. 8.You can change the name of the layers by double-clicking and retyping. Go to the next slide in this tutorial.

You’re now on Slide 5 Tutorial 3 – Graphics Keep the Format Ribbon open for this task as well. Click on the sports car and take a look at the Adjust tools. 1.Select both the sports car and the green background. 2.In the Arrange tool options, open the Align drop-down menu. Make sure that Align Selected Objects is selected. This will align the two objects in relation to each other rather than to the whole slide. 3.Select Align Center and Align Middle. 4.Select the sports car only. From the Adjust tools, open the Recolor drop- down menu and pass the mouse pointer over the various colour modes – note the effect on the image. 5.Click on Set Transparent Color. The mouse pointer has now changed. Click over the light blue background behind the sports car. This colour is now transparent, so the green background can be seen through. 6.Make sure the sports car is still highlighted, and take some time experimenting with the Brightness and Contrast settings. Go to the next slide in this tutorial.

You’re now on Slide 6 Tutorial 3 – Graphics The Shapes available in PowerPoint may be basic, but you can create some complex graphics with them. Grouped together, they can then be saved as stand- alone pictures. You’re going to create an exact replica of the graphic on the right. 1.Click the Insert tab. Open the Shapes drop-down menu. 2.Select Rounded Rectangle from the Rectangles group. Create a rectangle. 3.Set the size to 6cm by 5cm. Give it a solid line of about 7pt. Set the line colour to dark red and the fill colour to orange. 4.Now from the Basic Shapes select the Smiley Face and create one of size 2cm by 2cm. While creating the face hold down SHIFT so that it is a perfect circle. Give it a black line and a pink fill. 5.From the Flowchart shapes select the one called Flowchart: Delay. Create a shape of about 2cm by 3cm. 6.Click on the face. Click on the Home tab and select Format Painter from the Clipboard tools. Click on the Flowchart: Delay shape. This will now have the same line and fill colours as the face. A If we put the face and the Flowchart: Delay shape together, we can make up the (very) basic shape of a person. 7.Click on the Flowchart: Delay shape and rotate it 90 degrees anti- clockwise. Place the face on top of it (use the Align tool to make sure they are in line), and Group them. 8.Move them over the framed rectangle and use the Align tool again so that the figure is in the centre and middle of the rectangle. 9.Now Group the figure and the rectangle together. 10.Right-click on the new group and select Save As Picture. Find a place where to save the graphic and give it a name. 11.The default file format is PNG, which is usually sufficient. Windows Metafile is also a good format to create graphics which can be resized without losing much of their quality. Now you can use this graphic in other PowerPoint presentations or even in Word documents and other applications. Extra exercise: Use some of the basic shapes to create your own weather symbols. That’s the end of this tutorial. B