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About this lesson

Make the selected part of a picture transparent to either cleverly crop parts of the picture, or make parts of the picture transparent to overlay in front of other pictures without obscuring them.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2010, 2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ PowerPoint presentations from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Remove Picture Backgrounds.pptx
173.1 KB Remove Picture Backgrounds - Complete.pptx
495.2 KB

Quick reference

Topic

Removing the background from pictures.

When to use

To overlay images without obscuring objects behind them.

Instructions

  • Select the picture, click the Format tab, and then click Remove Background.
  • The square or rectangular marquee (used to select parts of an image) helps you focus on the part of the picture that you want to keep.
  • You can Mark Areas to Keep either as a single dot or as a line drawn with the pointer.
  • You can Mark Areas to Remove the background either as a single dot or as a line drawn with the pointer.
  • You can delete a mark by clicking Delete Mark and selecting the mark.
  • You can discard or keep all changes.

Also note:

Click the slide outside the selected image or the Keep Changes button to finalize the changes. The changes can also be undone at a later time by selecting the picture, clicking the Format tab, and then clicking Reset Picture.

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  • 00:04 This video is about the tool in PowerPoint that allows you to remove the background of pictures and the easiest way to find that option is to click
  • 00:12 on a picture, the format tab on the ribbon, and in the adjust group, is the remove background button. So I click on that; immediately, a
  • 00:22 marquee line with handles is applied to that picture, which is this little rectangular box here, and the pink areas are actually the masked
  • 00:31 areas that will form the transparency. Now I can grab the marquee box itself and position that on the slide, as well as adjusting the handles. And
  • 00:42 I’m going to focus on this particular gentleman who’s writing on the whiteboard, so as much as I can do with this particular marquee set of lines
  • 00:50 the better, however, notice that there’s still a little bit of the lady’s head available. So, holding the CTRL key on the keyboard and the scroll
  • 00:58 wheel of the mouse I’ve zoomed in a little bit, we can mark areas to keep if we wish, we can mark areas to remove. I click on the button and my
  • 01:07 mouse turns into a little pencil icon. So I can either click and drag to draw a line, or in fact I can just do a single click and draw a little dot
  • 01:18 and keep working around on that image until I’m actually happy that I’ve got the result that I want. And with a little bit of trial and error it will
  • 01:28 eventually get fairly close. Now I’m fairly happy with that; if I wanted to delete one of these marks I could in fact click the delete mark
  • 01:35 button, or I could discard all changes. But, as I said, I’m happy with that so I click keep all changes or even just a simple click off the
  • 01:44 picture and PowerPoint sets that image in terms of the work that’s been done. So I use the CTRL key on the keyboard and the scroll wheel on the
  • 01:53 mouse, zoom that down a little bit, and so there is our picture with the background removed. Now I’m going to combine these pictures in a very
  • 02:01 clever little artistic effect, so I will select that picture, go to the format tab, artistic effects, add a pencil sketch. Select both images on the slide
  • 02:13 by going CTRL A on the keyboard, the format tab, align button, notice align to slide, align middle, now there was no movement in the
  • 02:24 pictures because they are indeed already aligned to the middle of the slide. Align, centre, and there we go except the picture that I just did
  • 02:32 all that work on has disappeared, and one of the really cool things about PowerPoint, but as long as you know, is that pictures and objects on a
  • 02:40 slide can appear in layers. So this picture is on top of the picture that I worked on. So if I right click on that, send to back, I can send
  • 02:49 backward a little bit if I had multiple objects, but send to back and there our marquee and masked transparent picture has popped up to
  • 02:57 the front. That’s a very cool effect. Now it’s a little bit fuzzy along the edge there, so PowerPoint’s not a totally high end graphic
  • 03:04 program, but it’s not too bad and we could do a little bit more work to refine that. So remember the tool to remove backgrounds of pictures. It’s
  • 03:14 very simple to use, you get this marquee line with handles, the pink area is the area that will be transparent because that’s the mask. You
  • 03:24 can mark areas to keep or remove or delete marks and simple click off the slide. Now, I’m going to go CTRL Z, which will undo that last
  • 03:34 effect that I applied because I’m very happy with that. Remember also that not only can you undo, but you can also select the particular
  • 03:42 picture and reset that back to its original format. So it’s a very useful tool to use and you’ll need to experiment with it to get the effect that you
  • 03:51 desire.

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