Advanced Glow Options
Applying a Glow effect adds a nice halo around a selected shape or most other slide objects. You may find that the Glow effect defaults just do not work for you all the time. Especially since the default glow options are limited only to Theme Colors -- so if you want to make some changes, you have to step outside these defaults and change the glow color, alter the spread or transparency, etc.

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Apply Soft Edges to Shapes
Among the various shape effects available within PowerPoint 2013, probably the most subtle one is the Soft Edges effect. This effect adds an eaten-up, feathered edge to a selected shape. Soft Edges work best with larger shapes, especially if you use some of the larger Soft Edge variations available. PowerPoint provides some ready-to-use Soft Edges.

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Advanced Soft Edges Options
The Soft Edges effect adds an eaten-up, feathered edge to a selected shape. PowerPoint 2013 does provide you with some ready-to-use Soft Edges but you may want to edit the applied Soft Edges effect to be less or more pronounced. Whatever your reasons for customization, you can certainly edit the properties for the Soft Edges effect -- for instance, you can change the soft edge size parameter, as explained within this tutorial.

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Bevel Effects
By default, the PowerPoint shapes that you insert on your slide are flat and two-dimensional. And this indeed works well most of the time. Yet, there are opportunities and situations that may benefit from a three dimensional graphic. It is times like these that you can apply plethora of Shape Effects that PowerPoint provides, or just use the Bevel shape effect that makes it stand apart by making your shape look embossed, like a button, or even a pillow -- the different output variations occur since there are many Bevel presets available in PowerPoint 2013. Play with all the presets, and some Bevel presets will make your shapes will look as if they can pop out of the slide. Do note though that 3D does not always have to be loud and opulent -- there are plenty of Bevel effect presets that are more restrained and understated!

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Rotation Effects
Among all the Shape Effects in PowerPoint 2013, the 3-D ones stand apart. For any of the 3-D effects to work, you must understand two important 3-D parameters -- these two parameters are 3-D Rotation and 3-D Depth. Although you can rotate any shape that has a Depth of zero, you really cannot see any Depth within a flat object. Thus you must first rotate your object and then add Depth. We already covered the Bevel effect in a previous tutorial. In this tutorial, we will cover 3-D Rotation, and in the next tutorial, we will explore 3-D Depth.