Apply pictures as slide backgrounds in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows. You must ascertain whether the picture you are using will work well as a slide background, or not.
Author: Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint 2016 for Windows
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 and higher
Most presentations contain pictures. A picture in PowerPoint can be used in many ways, as a picture you insert, as a picture you place within a shape, or even as something that covers the entire slide as a background. In this tutorial, we will look at the last option, that lets you use a picture as a slide background. Before you begin, you need to put in plenty of thought into whether the picture you are using will work as a slide background or not? So how do you determine if a picture will work as a background or not? First of all, stay away from:
Look at the slide on the top within Figure 1, below, and then compare it with the slide at the bottom within the same figure. On at least three of the four counts explained above, the top slide fails. The bottom slide has none of the inherent weaknesses mentioned above, and in fact works with text of almost all colors!
Figure 1: Choose your background pictures wisely
So what if you must use a certain picture for your slide background even if it is full of color, highly saturated, or even crowded? You can "mellow" the picture and use it, as explained in our Recolor Picture Backgrounds in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows tutorial.
In addition, you can also choose texture as your slide background fill. In this tutorial we cover picture fills for slide backgrounds, and will look at texture fills in our Texture Fills for Slide Backgrounds in PowerPoint 2016 in Windows tutorial.
Before we go further, let us explore how picture fills are different from texture fills. Although both picture or texture fills work very similarly, choosing one option over the other can make the same background look so different. While a picture background results in your slide using a single picture as a backdrop, using a texture background can result in the same picture being tiled across the slide background. Also some pictures lend themselves better to being used as textures, especially if they are seamless.
To learn the difference between picture fills and texture fills, look at Figure 2 below. The sample slide on the left uses a picture fill that fills the entire slide expanse while the sample slide on the right uses the same picture as a texture fill. You can see that multiple tiles of the same picture form a texture fill.
Figure 2: Same picture used as a picture fill and a texture fill
Follow these steps to learn how you can use picture fills for your slide background in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows:
See Also:
Fills for Slide Background: Picture Fills for Slide Backgrounds (Glossary Page)
Picture Fills for Slide Backgrounds in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows
Picture Fills for Slide Backgrounds in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac
Picture Fills for Slide Backgrounds in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows
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