Home | Products | PowerPoint | Books | Book Excerpts
The Incredible Drawing Toolbar
Page 3 of 4
by Tom Bunzel - from Teach
Yourself PowerPoint 2003 in 24 Hours
...Continued from
Page 3
Applying Shadows
Using 3D Styles
Summary
Q&A
Applying Shadows
We can still do much more to enhance our simple shapes. With the
rectangle still selected, use the shadow styles to give it a deeper
look. The rectangle in Figure 14.16 has a subtle shadow applied
to it.
Figure 14.16
To apply a shadow, just select it from the shadow styles.
You can fine-tune your shadows by changing the shadow color or
moving the shadow slightly around the selected shape by opening
the Shadow Settings panel (refer to Figure 14.16 and see Figure
14.17).
Figure 14.17
Shadow settings enable you to nudge your shadow in different
directions, remove it, and change its color.
Back
Using 3D Styles
The final formatting tools on the Drawing toolbar are the 3D styles.
With the rectangle selected, click the 3-D Styles panel and select
a 3D effect to apply to the rectangle, as shown in Figure
14.18.
Click the 3-D Settings button to
- Rotate the object in space
- Extrude its depth
- Apply light
from different directions
Figure 14.18
3D styles and settings enable you to create an amazing array
of 3D effects, including depth and lighting, right inside of PowerPoint.
You’ll find that many of these menus and dialog boxes have
submenus and other options. The best way to explore them is to
try an effect on a selected object and, if it isn’t what
you wanted, click Undo and apply another effect.
Now that you’ve been working with these simple shapes
and have (hopefully) gotten excited about the formatting
options, see what you can create using the following concepts
you have already learned:
Use the Ctrl+drag copy method to make multiple identical
shapes.
Use the Shift key to select multiple objects to reformat.
Use the various styles—including shadows and 3D—to
create effects you really like.
Use the Format Painter you first learned about when formatting
text to apply the best styles quickly and easily from
one selected shape to another!
|
Back
Summary
Armed with the knowledge that any object we can select can be
animated, in this hour we began our exploration of the Drawing
toolbar. We looked at the various ways to create, select, reformat,
and refine our simple objects, such as lines, rectangles, and ovals,
and found that we can add text to some and create arrows out of
others.
We got comfortable with the many style modification tools, and
went through the Format AutoShape dialog box, which can always
be invoked with a right-click of a selected shape.
In the next hour, we’re going a lot further by exploring
the many really useful AutoShapes hidden in the Drawing toolbar,
and eventually using all of our skills to make our own animated
custom diagram.
Back
Q&A
Q When I create a shape,
it obscures another one. How can I have the first shape appear
in front of the most recent shape
I create?
A We’ll cover
this soon enough, but briefly you click the Draw button and select
Order. Then you can reposition the selected
shape in the front or the
back of the slide or move it slightly forward or backward.
Q Why are some style choices
grayed out or unavailable?
A There are two main reasons for a style selection
to be inaccessible. Either you’ve failed to select an object to which to apply a style, or you’ve
chosen an inappropriate style to apply to the selected shape.
Q When I enable objects to
snap to each other, what happens?
A You basically just have the edges
join together. It’s
probably not too useful because when you move one, the other stays
where it was.
Back
|
