These commands will take you into the clipart gallery. Choose a piece of clipart and click on Insert Clip command in the pop-up box to add it to your slide. The clipart dialog box will remain open even after you choose and insert a piece of clipart. When finished selecting clipart, close the Insert ClipArt dialog box.

To insert art or photographs created in other programs, import with Insert-Picture-From File. Locate the image file, select it and click on Insert.

Edit ClipArt by using the commands in the Picture toolbar. You can edit images that are vector based by Ungrouping the image and deleting or recoloring parts of the image.

On bitmapped images, you can do some editing but it is limited to lightening or cropping the image. You can not ungroup it and recolor parts or delete parts of it. That you must do in an image editing program such as Photoshop or IrfanView or Corel Photopainter. Refer to the course on Image Resolution and Scanning to understand digital images (condensed version of Understanding Digital Images) before inserting them into your presentations or posters.

Resizing art is the same basic process as resizing text boxes. Select the object and position the mouse pointer on one of the corner handles. To resize the image proportionally, press and hold the Shift key and the mouse button at the same time while dragging the mouse in the direction you want to resize the object. Release the mouse button first when the object is the size you want and then release the Shift key.

Dragging one of the middle handles will resize the object unproportionally and dragging a corner handle while holding down the Shift key will resize the object proportionally.

All images must be inserted directly into PowerPoint through the Insert - Picture command. If you copy and paste an image, you will corrupt your file. The corruption may not occur on the page the image is located and you may not know the file is corrupted until you try to send it to slides or rework or use the file later on.

New clipart, photos, and Web animations are continually added to the Microsoft "Design Gallery Live" Web site and are available for you to download and use in your presentations. While in the Clipart Dialog box. click on the Clips Online command to access these additional clipart images. For information on how to do this, see on-line instructions in the LGTA PowerPoint tutorial. PowerPoint 2000: <www.lgta.org/ppt2000/l3.cliplive.htm>. PowerPoint 97: <www.lgta.org/ppt97/l3.cliplive.htm>.

If there is a vector clipart image that you like but don't want to use the entire image, you can split it up and use just the part that is pertinent to your presentation.

Need to add digital camera pictures or scanned images to your presentation? Save the original image in TIFF format for archiving and then save as a JPEG in the proper resolution needed to insert into your presentation. Resolution should be a one-to-one pixel relationship for your final projection. Changing image resolution needs to be done in a photo editing program prior to inserting into PowerPoint. See the "Understanding Digital Images" article, May 2000, for more information on resolution.

PowerPoint Lessons Table of Contents