Frame Shapes for Photo Album in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

PowerPoint's Photo Album feature is very powerful, allowing you to insert hundreds of pictures with two or three clicks. The best part is all these pictures are editable, right down to their picture layouts, captions, etc. In fact, you can ask PowerPoint to show all pictures as black and white too. Moreover, you can also change the frame shapes of the pictures. Doing so provides pictures the effect of drop shadows, or a black border, or even a picture that's contained in a frame with rounded corners. What frame you choose depends entirely upon you. This tutorial will make you aware of the different frame choices, some of these can be seen in Figures 1, 2 and 3 below.

Figure 1 shows you the Rectangle and Rounded Rectangle frames from left to right. Rectangle shows your picture in a rectangle shape. Rounded Rectangle shows the picture in a rounded rectangle shape.

Figure 1: Rectangle and Rounded Rectangle frames

Figure 2 shows you the Simple Frame - White and the Simple Frame - Black from left to right. Simple Frame, White adds a white border around your picture. Simple Frame, Black adds a black border around your picture.

Figure 2: Simple Frame - White and Simple Frame - Black

Figure 3 shows you the Compound Frame, Black, Center Shadow Rectangle, and Soft Edge Rectangle frames from left to right. Compound Frame, Black adds a compound black border around your picture. Center Shadow Rectangle adds a shadow to the picture. Soft Edge Rectangle makes your picture edges soft.

Figure 3: Compound Frame - Black, Center Shadow Rectangle and Soft Edge Rectangle frames

Follow these steps to change the frame shape for your Photo Album presentation in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows:

1. Open your existing Photo Album presentation, and choose the Insert tab | Photo Album | Edit Photo Album option.
2. Doing so opens the Edit Photo Album dialog box, as shown in Figure 4. The area highlighted in red within Figure 4 includes the options you will use to change frame shapes.
3. 
   Figure 4: Edit Photo Album dialog box
3. The Frame shape option will be available with all picture layouts other than the Fit to slide layout (highlighted in blue within Figure 4, above). For this reason, you must first change the Picture layout to some other type so that you can see what Frame shapes are available.
4. We chose the 1 picture layout (highlighted in red within Figure 5 below). You can see that the Frame shape option is now enabled. Click the Frame shape drop-down list (highlighted in blue within Figure 5).
5. 
   Figure 5: Frame shape drop-down list
4. Choose any of the frame shapes, and you will see a preview of its appearance (highlighted in red within Figure 6) next to the Picture layout drop-down list. When done click the Update button (highlighted in blue within Figure 6) to apply the new frame shape to your Photo Album.
5. 
   Figure 6: Frame shape selected for the Photo Album
5. Save your Photo Album presentation.