Crop Picture to Shape in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

We already broadly explored Crop options in PowerPoint 2010. While you can do conventional cropping within PowerPoint, you can also decide to not crop within the typical rectangular constraints, and use another shape instead. This tutorial explains the Crop to Shape option that lets you choose non-rectangular cropping shapes for your pictures. The results tend to look like a picture has been contained within a shape.

Figure 1 below shows a conventional rectangular picture towards the left. Both the examples to the right have been created using the Crop to Shape option, that you will explore in this tutorial.

Figure 1: Picture cropped using the Crop to Shape option

Follow these steps to learn how to crop a picture using the Crop to Shape option:

1. Assuming you already have a picture inserted on your slide, select the picture to bring up the Picture Tools Format tab (highlighted in red within Figure 2) of the Ribbon. Activate this contextual tab by clicking on it. Locate the Size group, and click the downward pointing arrow in the Crop button highlighted in blue within Figure 2).
2. 
   Figure 2: Crop to Shape option within the Crop drop-down gallery
Note: The Picture Tools Format tab is a Contextual tab. These contextual tabs are special tabs in the Ribbon that are not visible all the time. They make an appearance only when you are working with a particular slide object that can be edited using the options within these tabs.
2. This opens the Crop drop-down gallery. Click the Crop to Shape option (highlighted in green within Figure 2, above) to open the Crop to Shape sub-gallery, as shown in Figure 3.
3. 
   Figure 3: Crop to Shape sub-gallery
3. Within the Crop to Shape sub-gallery, select any shape from various categories. Click on any shape variant of your choice. In Figure 4, you can see that the Diamond shape option within the Basic Shapes category was selected.
4. 
   Figure 4: Shape chosen for the selected picture
Tip: The Crop to Shape gallery you see in Figure 4 is identical to PowerPoint's Shapes gallery.
5. This will crop the selected picture into the shape you have chosen. Just click away from the selected shape once you are done to deselect it. In Figure 5 you can see that the selected picture has been cropped within a Diamond shape.
6. 
   Figure 5: Picture cropped into a diamond shape
Note: When Crop to Shape option is applied to a picture, it automatically trims the picture contents to fill the geometry of the shape and the picture proportion is maintained.
4. Save your presentation.