Modifying Clip Art


Most of the modifications that you will learn about in Chapter 13 apply to both photographs and clip art. For example, you can increase or decrease brightness and contrast, crop, rotate, and so on. However, there are also some special modifications that apply only to clip art and other vector images.

Recoloring a Clip

One of the top complaints about clip art is that the colors are wrong. For example, you may have the perfect drawing, but its colors clash with your presentation design. In earlier versions of PowerPoint, you could change an individual color within a clip art image. PowerPoint 2007 does-n't offer this capability, but you can recolor individual parts of a clip by changing it to a Microsoft Drawing object and then selecting and coloring individual lines or shapes. For more information, see the section "Deconstructing and Editing a Clip," later in this chapter.

On a more basic level, PowerPoint 2007 provides a Recolor option that enables you to apply a single-color wash to the image, based on any of the theme's colors or any fixed color. To apply a color wash to a clip, follow these steps:

  1. Select the clip that you want to recolor. The Format tab becomes available.

  2. On the Format tab, click Recolor to open the menu shown in Figure 12.13.

    image from book
    Figure 12.13: Select a color wash to apply to the clip.

  3. Click the color wash that you want to apply, or click More Variations to choose another color.

The colors on the Recolor menu are grouped as follows:

  • Color Modes: These are like the color modes from PowerPoint 2003 and earlier:

    Grayscale, Washout, and Black-and-White, plus one addition: Sepia.

  • Dark Variations: These are deep color washes of the theme colors.

  • Light Variations: These are light color washes of the theme colors.

  • More Variations: This opens a Theme Colors palette, from which you can select light and dark tints of the themes or standard (fixed) colors. You can also choose More Colors to open a Color dialog box for more fixed colors.

Setting a Transparent Color

Some clips enable you to redefine one of the colors as see-through, so that anything behind it shows through. This doesn't work on all clips because most clips already have a color defined as transparent: the background. This is why a clip art image appears to float directly on a colored background rather than being locked into a rectangle. However, for clips that do not have a transparent color already defined, you can define one.

Caution 

Setting a transparent color works best on clip art; in a photograph, an area that looks at first glance like a single color is often actually dozens of different shades of the same overall tint, and setting the transparent color sets only one of those many shades to be transparent.

To set a transparent color, open the Recolor menu, as in the preceding section (Figure 12.13). Then choose Set Transparent Color, and click a color in the image.

Deconstructing and Editing a Clip

Have you ever wished that you could open a clip art image in an image-editing program and make some small change to it? Well, you can. And what's more, you can do it without leaving PowerPoint.

Because clip art is composed of vector-graphic lines and fills, you can literally take it apart piece by piece. Not only can you apply certain colors (as in the preceding section), but you can also choose individual lines and shapes from it to recolor, move, and otherwise modify.

To deconstruct a piece of clip art, follow these steps:

  1. Right-click the clip and choose Edit Picture. A message appears, telling you that it is an imported picture, and asking whether you want to convert it to a Microsoft Office drawing object.

    Caution 

    Ungrouping a recolored clip resets the color adjustments you have made.

  2. Click Yes. Each individual shape and line in the clip is now a separate object that you can select individually.

To recolor an individual line or shape, follow these steps:

  1. Select the line or shape. Selection handles appear around it.

  2. On the Format tab, click Shape Fill and select a fill color.

  3. Click Shape Outline and select an outline color.

To move the pieces of the clip around, follow these steps:

  1. Right-click the clip and choose Group image from book Ungroup. All of the individual shapes show their own separate selection handles, as shown in Figure 12.14.

    image from book
    Figure 12.14: You can break apart a clip art image into separate shapes.

    Note 

    In some cases you do not have to ungroup in order to move an individual piece; you can try moving a piece without performing step 1 and see if that works for you.

  2. Click away from the selected shapes to deselect them all, and then click the individual shape that you want to move. Hold down the Ctrl key and click multiple shapes, if needed.

  3. Drag the shape where you want it.




Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 Bible
Microsoft Powerpoint 2007 Bible
ISBN: 0470144939
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2007
Pages: 268
Authors: Faithe Wempen

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