"Meet the Team" - Crop and Fill

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About this lesson

An introduction to a very useful pairing - crop and fill. We will create a 'Meet the Team' slide and fill shapes with pictures that fit perfectly without distortion.

Quick reference

Slide 4: Meet the Team - Crop and Fill

It's fairly common to include a 'Meet the Team' slide in a presentation. This slide can contain images and information about the heads of department or a particular team to give readers a better understanding of the individuals behind the company and their background. 

When to use

Include a 'Meet the Team' slide when you want the reader to know more about the faces behind the company. 

Instructions

A 'Meet the Team' slide can be built in many different ways. In this lesson, we are going to create a slide that contains the photos and information for 3 heads of department. We will be utilising pictures, crop and fill, text boxes and alignment tools. 

Reuse an Existing Slide

To improve efficiency when working in PowerPoint, we can duplicate slides that contain the background we want to use which saves us from recreating a new slide from scratch. 

  1. Select the title slide. 
  2. Press CTRL+D to duplicate the slide.  
  3. Delete the logo, company name and subheading. 

Add and Align Shapes

  1. From the Insert tab, in the Illustrations group, select Shapes. 
  2. Select the Oval shape. 
  3. Hold down SHIFT to maintain the aspect ratio and draw a circle on the slide. 
  4. From the Shape Format tab, in the Shape Styles group, select Shape Outline. 
  5. Select No Outline. 
  6. Press CTRL+D twice to duplicate the shape. 
  7. Select all 3 shapes. 
  8. From the Shape Format tab, in the Arrange group, click Align. 
  9. Select Align Middle and Distribute Horizontally. 
  10. Press CTRL+G to group the shapes. 
  11. From the Shape Format tab, in the Arrange group, click Align. 
  12. Select Align Center.
  13. Press CTRL+SHIFT+G to ungroup the shapes. 

Fill Shapes with Pictures

We now need to fill the shapes with pictures of the heads of deparment. You may have your own saved off to a folder or stored on a company network drive. We are going to use images from the website Pexels. 

  1. Right-click on the first shape and select Format Shape from the contextual menu. 
  2. From Shape Options, in the Fill group, select Picture or Texture Fill. 
  3. From Picture source, select Insert. 
  4. Browse to a folder that contains the picture. 
  5. Select the picture and click Insert. 
  6. From the Picture Format tab, in the Size group, click the lower-half of the Crop button. 
  7. Click Fill. 
  8. Use the resize handles to ensure the size of the person in the picture is consistent. 
  9. Click Crop. 
  10. Repeat the steps to fill the remaining shapes with pictures. 

Format the Picture Border

A picture border ensures the picture stands out from the background. 

  1. Select all shapes on the slide. 
  2. From the Picture Format tab, in the Picture Styles group, click Picture Border. 
  3. Change the border color to White, Background 1. 
  4. From the Picture Format tab, in the Picture Styles group, click Picture Border. 
  5. Select Weight. 
  6. Change the line weight to 3pts. 

Reuse Existing Content

Reusing existing content makes the process of creating new slides more efficient. Why spend time adding a text box and applying formatting when text that contains the same formatting already exists on another slide. We need to add a slide heading that looks the same as the heading on the 'About Us' slide. 

  1. Click on the 'About Us' slide. 
  2. Select the heading placeholder. 
  3. Press CTRL+C to copy the heading. 
  4. Click on the 'Meet the Team' slide. 
  5. Press CTRL+V to paste the heading. 
  6. Change the title to 'Meet the Team'. 

Use Text Boxes

Additional information such as the employee name and job title can be added using text boxes. 

  1. From the Insert tab, in the Text group, select Text Box. 
  2. Draw a text box. 
  3. Type the employees name. 
  4. Select the text box placeholder. 
  5. Press CTRL+D twice to duplicate the text box. 
  6. Edit the text to reflect the names of the remaining employees. 
  7. Repeat steps 1-6 for the employees job titles. 

Aligning Text Boxes and Pictures

Ensure that all text boxes and shapes are aligned correctly in relation to each other using alignment tools. 

First, align the employee's picture with the name and job title text boxes. 

  1. Select the first employees picture, name and job title. 
  2. From the Picture Format tab, in the Arrange group, select Align. 
  3. Choose Align Center.
  4. Repeat steps 1-3 for the remaining employees. 

Next, align the text boxes that contain the employee's name and job title with each other. 

  1. Select all of the text boxes that contain an employee name. 
  2. From the Picture Format tab, in the Arrange group, select Align. 
  3. Choose Align Top.
  4. Select all of the text boxes that contain a job title. 
  5. From the Picture Format tab, in the Arrange group, select Align. 
  6. Choose Align Top.

Hints & tips

  • When filling shapes with an employees photo, ensure the person in the photo is the same distance away from the camera in each shape. If one person's photo is full length, but another is just a head and shoulders shot, use the resize handles to make them consistent. 
  • When copying and pasting content from one slide to another, PowerPoint will paste the content in the same position as where it was copied from.
  • Ensure that the photos used are high quality, professional images. 
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  • 00:04 In this lesson, we're going to create a basic Meet the Team slide.
  • 00:08 And this might be something that you want to add to introduce the director or
  • 00:13 maybe the heads of department to the client.
  • 00:15 And to create this particular slide,
  • 00:17 we're not going to use any techniques that we haven't already used.
  • 00:21 So, this gives you a good opportunity to practice.
  • 00:24 But the main reason why we're creating this slide is because we're going to use
  • 00:28 it a bit later on when we talk more about animation.
  • 00:31 And I'm going to show you some really cool ways to add pizzazz to this slide.
  • 00:36 So let's jump back to our presentation and put this together.
  • 00:39 So once again, I am going to take a shortcut here because I want to use this
  • 00:43 background that we have on the title slide.
  • 00:47 So let's select the first slide Ctrl+D to duplicate.
  • 00:50 And once again, I'm going to delete out all of these objects.
  • 00:53 So, let's just select and delete the heading and also the subheading.
  • 00:58 So, now let's build our slide.
  • 01:00 We're going to start with our three circles.
  • 01:03 So again, these are just shapes.
  • 01:05 Let's grab our circle tool, hold down Shift and drag.
  • 01:10 And I want these reasonably large, if I want to check the actual measurements
  • 01:15 on this circle if I jump up to shape format and I can see the size just here.
  • 01:20 Now I actually want these to be 318.
  • 01:24 I can see that I have an outline.
  • 01:28 So I want to make sure that I remove that.
  • 01:31 And then I'm going to duplicate this shape twice Ctrl+D, Ctrl+D.
  • 01:36 We're going to utilize our alignment tools that we've learned to organize these so
  • 01:41 that they're aligned with each other and also with the slide.
  • 01:45 So let's select all three shapes by holding
  • 01:48 down Shift up to our alignment group.
  • 01:51 And I'm going to say align middle, and then going to distribute horizontally.
  • 01:57 I'm going to press Ctrl+G to group all the shapes together.
  • 02:00 And then when they're one object,
  • 02:03 I'm going to align to the center and also to the middle.
  • 02:07 Now, I want to insert staff members' pictures inside these circles.
  • 02:11 So I can't have them grouped.
  • 02:13 And if you remember, the shortcut to ungroup is Ctrl+Shift+G.
  • 02:17 It's also worth noting that when you do have objects grouped,
  • 02:21 you have the ungroup option in the arrange group up here.
  • 02:24 Now once again,
  • 02:25 the images that I'm using to fill the shapes I've obtained from pexels.
  • 02:29 They're not real people, they're just stock images.
  • 02:32 So let's right click on our first shape and jump into our Format shape menu.
  • 02:37 I'm going to fill with a picture.
  • 02:39 I'm going to grab my picture from my Downloads folder, and
  • 02:43 we're going to use this guy and click on Insert.
  • 02:47 Now his picture looks really weird at the moment.
  • 02:49 So again, we need to use our crop and fill technique.
  • 02:56 Now it looks pretty good.
  • 02:56 Let's just move him across very slightly and click on Crop.
  • 03:00 Let's do the same and fill the other two circles.
  • 03:04 We're going to click picture, insert picture from a file.
  • 03:10 And this time I'm going to add this lady just here and click on Insert.
  • 03:16 Let's jump up to crop and down to fill.
  • 03:20 And what I would say,
  • 03:21 when you're doing something like this when it comes to people's images,
  • 03:25 you want to make sure that you kind of have them at the same distance away.
  • 03:29 So you can see here she's quite far away in this picture currently whereas this
  • 03:34 first guy is fairly close to the camera.
  • 03:36 So you want to make sure that they're all relative to each other,
  • 03:39 otherwise it can look a little bit strange.
  • 03:41 So I'm going to use my resize handles and just make this lady a lot bigger.
  • 03:47 Drag it down, and get her so that she's roughly, or
  • 03:50 her face size is roughly the same as the first guy.
  • 03:54 I think that looks pretty good.
  • 03:56 Click on Crop.
  • 03:57 Click on the third circle, picture fill.
  • 04:02 Now let's find our last guy, which is this dude just here.
  • 04:06 Let's insert him, crop and fill, and I have the same issue here.
  • 04:12 He's a little bit further away.
  • 04:13 So I want to resize and drag him down.
  • 04:17 I think he needs to be slightly bigger than that.
  • 04:20 You could probably afford to go even bigger.
  • 04:26 There we go.
  • 04:26 That's a little bit better, and crop.
  • 04:29 So now that I have all my pictures inside my shapes, if I select all of my objects,
  • 04:34 I want to add a nice white border around the outside.
  • 04:38 So up to picture border, I want it to be white.
  • 04:43 And I'm also going to change the weight of that border.
  • 04:46 So let's make that a bit thicker.
  • 04:48 Let's do 3 points.
  • 04:51 If you want all of your headings to look the same,
  • 04:54 again, I like to take a bit of a shortcut.
  • 04:57 So if I jumped to the About Us slide,
  • 04:59 I want all of my slide headings to kind of look like this.
  • 05:04 So I'm going to select the placeholder Ctrl+C to copy,
  • 05:08 jump back to my Meet the Team slide, Ctrl+V to paste.
  • 05:13 And the cool thing about PowerPoint is that it will paste it in exactly the same
  • 05:18 location from where you copied it from.
  • 05:20 So now all I have to do here is change the title.
  • 05:26 To meet the team, and I'm going to drag that out to give it a bit more room.
  • 05:31 But I haven't had to fiddle around changing the font, changing the color,
  • 05:35 making sure it's the correct size.
  • 05:37 Now if we just go back to our finished version, you can see all I've done
  • 05:42 here is add some more text boxes for their names and their job title.
  • 05:47 And that's a pretty straightforward task.
  • 05:49 So I'm going to leave that for you to have a little play around with.
  • 05:52 A couple of pointers here, try and make sure that the names and
  • 05:57 job titles are aligned correctly with the picture above and
  • 06:01 also aligned horizontally with each other.
  • 06:04 Now, you should have learned enough skills so
  • 06:06 far to be able to work out how to do that.
  • 06:08 And as I said,
  • 06:09 we're going to use this slide a bit later on when we're talking about animation.
  • 06:14 But for now, that is it.
  • 06:15 I will see you in the next lesson.

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