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Once you apply a glow effect to any shape in PowerPoint 2010, you may find that the defaults just do not work for you! So you may want to make some changes, probably change the glow color, it's spread or transparency, etc. In this tutorial you are going to learn how you can access the Advanced Glow Options in PowerPoint 2010, which make all those changes doable.

Follow these steps to get started:

1. Select the shape you want to apply the glow effects to -- or maybe you want to select a shape that already has glow effect applied which you want to edit. Then double click the shape to activate the Drawing Tools Format tab in the Ribbon (see Figure 1). Within this tab locate the Shape Styles group and click the Shape Effects button that you can see in Figure 1 (highlighted in red).
   
   
   Figure 1: Shape Effects within Drawing Tools Format tab of the Ribbon
   
   
   Note: The Drawing Tools Format tab is a contextual tab. These tabs are special tabs in the Ribbon that are not visible all the time -- they only make an appearance when you are working with a particular slide object which can be edited using special options.
   
   
2. This brings up the Shape Effects drop-down gallery shown in Figure 2. From the Shape Effects drop-down gallery choose Glow | Glow Options (the last option in Figure 2).
   
   
   Figure 2: Glow Options within the Shape effects gallery
   
   
3. This opens the Glow and Soft Edges tab of the Format Shape dialog box, as shown in Figure 3. You can see that the Soft Edges options within this tab have been faded out in Figure 3 since we don't discuss them in this tutorial. If you want to explore those options, you can read the tutorial Advanced Soft-Edges Options In PowerPoint 2010.
   
   
   Figure 3: Glow options within Format Shape dialog box
   
   Glow options work with certain parameters:
   
   
   1. Presets: Click the downward arrow next to the icon, which brings up a gallery similar to what you see in Figure 2 above. See the Apply Glow Effects to Shapes In PowerPoint 2010 tutorial if you want more information.
      
      
   2. Color: Allows you to change the glow color. Click color button to access a fly out menu as (see Figure 4). Here you can choose any color for the glow. If you want some more explanation about options under Color menu, you can go to the More Glow Colors in PowerPoint 2010 tutorial.
      
      
      Figure 4: Glow color options
      
      
   3. Size: Use the slider or enter the glow size value in percentages to increase or decrease the size (spread) of the glow.
      
      
   4. Transparency: Allows you to alter the transparency of the glow. You can use the slider, or type the glow transparency in percentage values.
4. You can see a live preview of the effect as you make changes. Once you achieve the glow effect you want, click Close to get back to the slide. Figure 5 shows our pre selected shape (refer to Figure 1) with the changed glow effect.
   
   
   Figure 5: Rectangle shape with edited Glow effect
   
   
5. Remember to save your presentation often.
   

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