After a picture is inserted on your PowerPoint slide,
you might want to make adjustments to the picture itself so that it looks distinctive and focused. You can change a picture's look by
resizing,
cropping,
changing color values, adjusting saturation, or by
applying artistic effects. In this tutorial, we'll explore the options available within
PowerPoint 2016 to make these picture adjustments. Later, in subsequent
tutorials of this series, you will learn more about the individual options we discuss in this tutorial.
When a picture is selected, the Picture Tools Format tab appears on the
Ribbon as shown in Figure 1 (highlighted in
red).
Figure 1: Picture Tools Format tab activated
Note: You can not only make adjustments to pictures inserted on slides, but also to pictures used as
fills for shapes. If a shape that has a picture
fill is selected, the
Ribbon area will show two contextual tabs: the
Drawing Tools Format tab and the
Picture Tools Format tab, as you can see in
Figure 2. Make sure that you select the
Picture Tools Format tab (highlighted in
red within
Figure 2) which
includes picture format options, and not the
Drawing Tools Format tab which includes options to alter the container
shape.
Figure 2: Two contextual tabs appear when a shape with a picture fill is selected
Within the Picture Tools Format tab, you can see the Adjust group (highlighted in
blue within both Figures 1 and 2, above) which includes various options to
make adjustments to the picture. Let's explore these options individually from left to right as shown in the Ribbon tab:
-
Remove Background: This feature figures out the boundaries of an object within the picture automatically, and allows
you to keep some portion of the picture, and remove the rest. If you want to retain only some selected part of the picture, this is the
best option to use. Note that this option doesn't work with
texture fills and
picture fills that are tiled. To learn
how this option works, refer to our
Remove Background from Pictures tutorial.
-
Corrections: This option is used to adjust the sharpness, softness, brightness, and contrast values of the picture. To
learn more about this option, refer to our
Picture Corrections tutorial.
-
Color: This option comes handy when you want to change the overall color feel of the picture, like a monochromatic tint.
You can find more information about this option in our
Changing Color of Pictures tutorial.
-
Artistic Effects: Here you can select various artistic effects from a Artistic Effects drop-down
gallery. To learn more about this option, refer to our
Artistic Effects for Pictures
tutorial.
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Compress Pictures: By default, PowerPoint embeds your inserted pictures into your presentation leaving the size and
format largely unchanged. You can reduce the size of the inserted picture using the Compress option. Just select the
picture, and click the Compress button within the Adjust group to summon the
Compress Pictures dialog box that you can see in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Compress Pictures dialog box
Within the Compress Pictures dialog box, you can decide the quality of the inserted picture choosing between any of the
four Target output options. Then, if you have cropped the picture, select the Delete cropped areas of picture check-box
to remove the unused portions of the picture permanently. And select the Apply only to this picture check-box to apply
the changes to only the selected picture. Once you are done, click the OK button. Learn more about compression in our
Compress Pictures tutorial; also see our
Set Document Resolution page.
-
Change Picture: This option enables you to change a picture on your slide with retaining all the effects or animations
applied to the original picture. You don't need to delete the original picture and start all over again. Just change any existing picture
into another with just a couple of clicks. Learn more in our
Change Picture in PowerPoint 2016 tutorial.
-
Reset Picture: This option resets the picture to its original state. however, this option will not do a full reset if
you have already used the Compress Pictures option, explained earlier on this page. More in our
Reset Pictures in PowerPoint 2016 tutorial.
-
Crop: Although this option is not within the Adjust group we'll explore the Crop
option also. Instead of just one kind of crop, there are three crop variations which have been explained in the tutorials
Crop Picture and
Crop Pictures (Crop to Shape). Also refer to our
Reposition Picture Fills with Crop
tutorial to learn how you can adjust the picture fills using Crop option.
See Also:
Adjust Picture Options in PowerPoint 2013
for Windows
Adjust Picture Options in PowerPoint 2011
for Mac
Adjust Picture Options in PowerPoint 2010 for
Windows