Add Picture Fills to Shapes in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Picture fills can look great and distracting at the same time, it all depends upon the type of picture you use for the fill. Remember using a detailed or crowded picture as a fill for a small shape will get you no awards for slide design! Any shape on your slide in PowerPoint 2011 can be provided with a picture fill in the same way that you learned to add or change solid fills or gradient fills. Scroll down this page to see a sample presentation that contains shapes with picture fills. Then follow these steps to change or apply a picture fill to a shape:

1. Select the shape that you want to change the fill for. Alternatively, if you just want to follow this tutorial step-by-step, launch PowerPoint. You will see the Presentation Gallery which allows you to set all attributes of your new presentation, such as a preset Theme or template. Make selections or just click Cancel in this gallery to open a blank presentation with a new slide, PowerPoint 2011 users can change the slide layout of this slide to Blank by selecting Layout | Blank within the Home tab of the Ribbon.
2. Within the Home tab of the Ribbon, locate the Insert group and click the Shape button to access the Shape gallery with different types of shape options that you can see in Figure 1. Select any shape option to access the related submenu, select the shape you prefer (we selected the Teardrop shape, as you can see in Figure 1).
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   Figure 1: Shape gallery
3. Click and drag on the slide to insert the shape, or click once on the blank slide to place an instance of the shape. Select the shape so that the Ribbon area now shows the Format tab, as shown in Figure 2 (highlighted in red). Activate this Ribbon tab by clicking on it.
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   Figure 2: Format tab of the Ribbon
Note: 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.
4. Within the Format tab, locate the Shape Styles group. Then click the downward arrow next to the Fill button to view the Fill drop-down gallery that you can see in Figure 3.
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   Figure 3: Fill drop-down gallery
5. Within the Fill drop-down gallery, select the Fill Effects option which is the last option (refer to Figure 3 above). This opens the Format Shape dialog box. Make sure that the Fill panel is active, and click on the Picture or Texture tab that you can see highlighted in red in Figure 4.
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   Figure 4: Format Shape dialog box
6. Within this tab, click the Choose Picture button that you will find within From file section (highlighted in blue in Figure 4). This will display the Choose a Picture dialog box as shown in Figure 5.
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   Figure 5: Choose a Picture dialog box
7. In this dialog box, navigate to the folder where the picture to be used as shape fill is located, select it, and click the Insert button. This will take you back to the Format Shape dialog box, where you can now see the selected picture in the preview area, as shown in Figure 6.
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   Figure 6: Picture fill chosen for the selected shape
8. At this point, you can make some more changes to the picture fill using the other options in the Format Shape dialog box as explained below:
1. If you want to change the transparency of the picture fill, you can use the Transparency slider that you can see in Figure 6.
2. Also, if you want the picture fill to rotate when the container shape itself is rotated, do select the Rotate with shape check-box as shown highlighted in red in Figure 6.
3. If you want the picture used as a fill to be tiled, select the Tile check-box which you can see below the Rotate with shape check-box in Figure 6. By using this option you can make any picture to behave like a texture. We cover texture fills in a subsequent tutorial.
Note: When you are making changes to the shape attributes within Format Shape dialog box, you can see the Live Preview of the changes in the selected shape. So, always place the Format Shape dialog box on the slide such that it won't hide the selected shape.
9. Once you have made all required selections in the Format Shape dialog box, click OK to get back to the slide where you can see the shape filled with selected picture, as shown in Figure 7.
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    Figure 7: Shape with picture fill
10. Remember to save your presentation often.

Sample Presentation of Picture Fill in Shape:

Click below to view this presentation on SlideShare

Click below to view this presentation on YouTube