Inserting Pictures in PowerPoint 2016

During this Microsoft PowerPoint 2016 training tutorial video, we will talk about how to insert pictures into your PowerPoint slides. We will also talk about how to format the background, which can either be solid fill, gradient fill, or picture or texture fill; and how to change the transparency of the background.

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Okay we’re running down the list here. We’re in module five and we’re talking about adding graphics to your presentation to create a visual interest. So we’ve already talked about shapes, that was section one of this module. We talked about graphics.

That was section two of this module. And now we’re in section three and we’re going to talk about putting in pictures or photograph type things. So pretty easy to do so let me show you how this works.

So we’re back in our presentation here and we’re on slide two where we had previously put in this animated GIF. I want to take him out now. I’m just going to delete that. Let’s say that instead we’ve decided we want to use an actual picture here over on the right. Now when we first put in this slide we actually had gone to New Slide and we chose the layout Title and Content.

I want to change this layout. So I’m going to go up here to Layout and I’m going to choose Two Content. Now this way it allows me to put something on the left or something on the right. Just wherever I click I’m going to get that placeholder that pops up.

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Now what you’re going to notice here is that you have a button right here that says Pictures. This would be the online pictures. So let’s say that I’ve got a picture already saved on my computer. I’m just going to click on that and then I navigate to wherever that file is located. Now let’s say that in this case I want to put in this one called Graduate. So I’m going to either double click or choose it once and insert it.

And now you’ll see it’s inserted in my slide. Notice it took on the exact size of my object there. So if I wanted it bigger or smaller I can certainly move it if I want and change the size of it. Whatever I want to do with it.

Now that picture is actually sitting on top of the slide. What do you do if you want to put a picture in and you don’t have a little button that tells you to click here to put the picture in? Well you can still do that.

So let’s do this I’m going to go over to slide four and click on it and I want to add a new slide and I want to add a blank slide. We’ll pretend that later on this would be the last slide in our presentation.

Now all I want to do on this slide is just put a picture of our college campus let’s say. And that’s really all I’m going to want here. Now if I do it the same way I’m going to go to Insert, Picture. And let’s say this time I choose this one, campus life let’s say. Now you’ll notice the picture is a little bit bigger this time and it sits on top of my slide like we just mentioned.

So if I wanted it to be the exact same size as the slide so I don’t see this blue back here what I would end up doing is I would be grabbing the picture and I’d be actually adjusting it using these control handles we’ve talked about several times now. And I could eventually make it look decent. But let me tell you the problem you’re going to have with this.

If you’ve got multiple slides in your presentation and multiple slides have pictures on them like this the size of your file is going to get really large because this picture is not part of the slide. It’s sitting on top of it. And if you have a lot of slides in here like this it could even slow down how fast your presentation runs when you’re running the slideshow. So here’s another option. I’m going to go ahead and just delete this picture. I can actually make the picture the actual background of this slide and here’s how you do this.

I’m going to go up to the Design tab and I’m going all the way to the right where it says Format Background. Now here the background of the slide itself can be a solid fill. And just to tell you what your choices are real quick with this. I can choose a different color if I want or I can choose a transparency, meaning it’s a little lighter, a little darker, a little easier to see through kind of thing. I might want a gradient.

And if you have a gradient chosen you can choose some of the presets they’ve got. And gradients are just a mixture of different colors and you can change gradient stops and things like that which we’ll discuss a little bit later. But right now I’m trying to put in a picture.

Now the colors or the texture fill that you see here these are part of the particular design that we chose when we put our presentation together to begin with. So I want to Insert picture from file. Now I’m going to choose the same picture and insert it but this time notice it’s the background of the entire slide.

It’s not a picture on top of the slide. So therefore your file doesn’t get that much larger. Now remember if you wanted to take this little thing off just choose Hide background graphics and it’s gone.

Now let me just show you one other way you might use pictures. I’m going to go to slide one. This is our title slide and again it’s kind of boring. It’s just got the title and the subtitle. But what if we put a picture of our campus right at the top here? So I’m going to go ahead and take this thing off. I’ll hide the background graphics. And this time when I insert the picture I’m going to do it this way because I don’t want it to fill up the background of the slide. I just want to put this on the slide.

But I’m going to go to Pictures and I’m going to choose Our School this time and insert it. Now what I can do if I want is I can go ahead and move some of these placeholders around, where we had our title and our subtitle already. And I can also make the picture a little bit smaller.

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I can crop it out. There’s just a bunch of different things I can do just to work with this picture. So let’s just leave it there for now. I’m going to show you in a little bit how to make these words lay on top of the grass here and things like that. But at least I got the picture in and we can work with it that way.

Okay? So that gives you an idea of how to put these pictures in.

So let’s go ahead and do a little exercise for module five just to make sure you know how to add these different things in. And then that’ll wrap up module five. So I’ll see you over in the exercise.

Simon Calder

Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA. He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!