PC Pro Series: How to Make Your Presentations Stand Out!

As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.

What we see has a powerful impact on us – that’s why a well-edited presentation with the right imagery can take your teaching to the next level.

Image cropping:

This helps bring focus to the relevant part of the image, while eliminating the unwanted parts.

How:

• Open a presentation
• Choose Insert on the menu
• Scroll down to Image
• Select Upload from computer
• Choose the image and click Open
• To crop the image, double-click on it and drag the black tabs to your desired size

Image callout:

It’s one of the most powerful features of PowerPoint. In a callout, you cut out a shape to draw attention to a specific part of the image.

How:

• Copy paste the image to be edited
• Overlay it with another picture
• Select Shapes from the Insert tab
• Select the desired shape
• Go to Format and scroll down to Format options
• Click the Size & Positionbox in format options
• The width and height should be equal, to create a perfect shape
• Go to format options on the original image and reduce brightness. This will help the callout stand out against the original image.

Image overlay:

Text can be hard to read and can easily get lost in a busy image. Image overlay helps make text readable. It involves adding a translucent shape over the original image, which is dark enough to make both the text and the image visible.

How:

• Choose Shapes on the insert menu bar
• Grab the corners and drag them to fit your picture
• Go to Fill colour on the menu bar
• Click Custom at the bottom
• A small window will open for transparency
• Lower the transparency until it’s almost fully transparent. It needs to be dark enough to for the text to be read and the picture to be clear

With these skills in hand, everyone is going to pay attention to your presentations. To get even better, here are Five Ways To Brush Up Your Presentation Skills For Class.