A subscriber turned me on to Before & After Magazine‘s YouTube videos, showing great design tips. I thought I would show you how to create one of their effects in PowerPoint. Read to the end, because there’s a contest with a prize for 3 winners!
First, watch their video
How to create “stickouts” in PowerPoint
How can you create cool stickout photos in PowerPoint? Here are the steps:
1. Insert a photo that is appropriate for this technique. You need a strong object in the foreground, because you’ll remove its background. You also need an object that has a component that you want to “stick out.” I used a photo of a jet, taking a cue from the video.
2. Expand the photo, if you want, to cover the entire slide. Here you can see that the photo, which is square, extends to the sides of the slide, but over the top. I moved the photo a little to the right of the slide, so you could see how far up it extends. But the nose of the jet doesn’t extend past the top of the slide.
3. Duplicate the image. You can just select it and press Ctrl+D. The two photos will be slightly offset, which is good, because you need to be able to select them separately. Here, the front photo is selected; it’s a little to the right of the original.
4. Now you need to remove the background of the front image. Select the front image. In PowerPoint 2010, click the Format tab and use the Remove Background tool to remove its background. I have instructions here. Some other useful blog posts for earlier versions on PowerPoint are here and here. In the image below, I temporarily deleted the original photo, so you could see how the jet looks without the background.
5. Select the back image and crop it so that part of the front photo sticks out. In the figure below, I temporarily deleted the front image, so you could see the effect of the crop.
6. Select the front image and move it exactly over the back image. Here’s the final result.
Do you like it?
Contest!
Send me your example of this technique! I’ll publish the 3 best examples and give the winners a free copy of Slide Design for Non-Designers (or another one of my ebooks — your choice). Entries are due by March 5, 2012.
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Thank you, Ellen. This is great information. I am eager to try it out for my next presentaion!
I’d love to see the result. Don’t forget the contest that I mention at the end of the post!
Is March 5 2011 not a little bit old????
Oops! I’ll change it to 2012. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Gladly done Ellen. So now you see how carefull I(and I think many more people) read your website. For me it’s every time a surprice to see what I can learn. Grt from Holand
Exciting! Thanks!
The issue I’m having is that when I try to recolor the background to transparent, it will not clear the entire background but only part of it, and it’s blotchy. I’ve tried several pics with the same result.
Anyone else have this issue?
Irene,
Which version of PowerPoint do you have? Before 2010, your results won’t be as good, because you won’t have the Remove Background feature. However, this might help you: http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/crop-around-an-image/. It’s not perfect, though. You can also remove the background in a good image-editing program.