Apply Preset Effects to Shapes in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows
Apply preset effects to shapes in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.
Author:Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint 2010 for Windows
OS: Windows XP and higher
In PowerPoint 2010 there are six types of
Shape Effects that you can use, and more than one of these
effects can be applied to a selected shape. It goes without saying that some combinations of these effects look better than others, the restraint to
not go overboard is always a good thing. On the other hand, trying out all the effect combinations may take a lot of time, fortunately, the Presets
option comes to your rescue. This option lets you use pre-combined combinations of the different effects, these work well almost always.
To see a sample presentation containing Preset effects in PowerPoint 2010, scroll down to the bottom of this page.
Follow these steps to apply a Preset effect style to a shape:
Select the shape that you want to apply the effect to.
Alternatively, if you just want to follow this tutorial step-by-step, launch PowerPoint 2010. Most of the time, PowerPoint will open with a new slide
in a presentation, PowerPoint 2010 users can
change the slide layout to Blank by selecting
Home tab | Layout | Blank.
Within the Home or Insert tab of the
Ribbon, click the Shapes button to access the
Shapes gallery that you can see in Figure 1. Select any shape, and then either drag and draw, or click once on the
blank slide to place an instance of the shape (We used a
Rectangle shape as you can see later in Figure 2).
Figure 1: Shapes gallery
Select the shape so that the Ribbon area now shows the Drawing Tools Format tab, as shown in
Figure 2. Activate this Ribbon tab by clicking on it.
Figure 2: 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.
From the Drawing Tools Format tab, locate the Shape Styles group, then click the Shape Effects
button (highlighted in red within Figure 2) to access the Shape Effects drop-down
gallery that you can see in Figure 3.
In this gallery, select the Preset option (refer to Figure 3 again).
Figure 3: Preset sub-gallery
This opens the Preset sub-gallery (refer to Figure 3 above) that provides the following options:
A. No Presets:
This is the option you can use if you already have applied a Preset effect to a shape that you want to
remove.
B. Presets:
There are twelve Preset effects which can be applied to a selected shape. All these presets are combinations of
the other six effect types that PowerPoint provides:
Shadow,
Reflection,
Glow,
Soft Edges,
Bevel, and
3-D Rotation.
C. 3-D Options:
This option takes you to the 3-D Options tab of the Format Shape dialog box, this is
something that is covered as part of the
Bevel and 3-D Options tutorial.
Move the cursor over any of the effects within the Preset gallery to see a
live preview of the effect. Click on the effect to apply it to the
selected shape. In Figure 4 you can see the previously selected Rectangle shape applied with a
Preset effect.
Figure 4: Shape with applied Preset effect
Tip: Place your shape in the area that is not covered by the Shape Styles drop-down gallery as shown in Figure 4,
so that you can see the Live Preview.
Have your ever used keyboard shortcuts and sequences in PowerPoint? Or are you a complete keyboard aficionado?
Do you want to learn about some new shortcuts? Or do you want to know if your favorite keyboard shortcuts are documented?
