Touching Up Images with the Picture Toolbar

Excel features the Picture toolbar, which provides several tools you can use to adjust the picture's brightness and contrast, crop the image (to use only a portion of it), transform a color picture into grayscale or black-and-white, and add a border around the picture. To access these tools, display the Picture toolbar by right-clicking any toolbar and choosing Picture . To use a tool, select the image and then click the button for the desired effect. Table 9.1 lists the buttons in the Picture toolbar and describes the function of each button.

Table 9.1. Picture Toolbar Buttons

Button	Name	Function
	Insert Picture	Enables you to insert a graphic file from disk.
	Color	Displays a menu that enables you to transform a color image into grayscale, black-and-white, or washout (a ghost image that can lie on top of text without hiding it ”a watermark).
	More Contrast	Is similar to a TV control that increases the contrast of the image.
	Less Contrast	Decreases the contrast of an image.
	More Brightness	Makes the image brighter.
	Less Brightness	Makes the image darker .
	Crop	Turns the mouse pointer into a cropping tool. Move the pointer over one of the handles and drag it to chop off a portion of the picture. You can use the cropping tool to uncrop a cropped picture, as well.
	Rotate Left	Rotates the image 90 ° counterclockwise around its center point.
	Line Style	Enables you to add a border around the picture.
	Compress Pictures	Automatically reduces the file size of pictures in your document, so they take up less disk space and download and print more quickly.
	Format Picture	Displays the Format Picture dialog box, which offers plenty of options for changing the appearance and layout of the image.
	Set Transparent Color	Makes the selected color in a picture transparent so that the background of the page (paper) or screen shows through. Click this button, and then click the color you want to make transparent. (This button is available for most bitmapped images, but for only some clip art images.)
	Reset Picture	Changes the options back to their original settings in case you make a mistake while entering changes.