Manipulating Images Using Microsoft’s Picture Toolbar by Jeff Wood Ideally, when bringing images into Microsoft Office products such as Word or PowerPoint, it is a good idea to manipulate them in an outside image editor such as Photoshop. Most people, however, do not have access to Photoshop. It is a complex program, and expensive. This article will show how to work with images directly using the picture toolbar. The picture toolbar is available for most other Microsoft programs as well (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher). It is not available for Access. The Picture Toolbar The first step is to bring up the picture toolbar. Move your cursor to the toolbar area of the window, near the top. Right-click, and you should get a list of toolbar options. Choose “Picture.” The picture toolbar should appear (Figure 1). This toolbar contains nearly all the tools you’ll need to work with the image.
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Figure 1 - the picture toolbar (icons labeled by number)
The Icons We’ll discuss the icons in the order they appear on the toolbar, from left to right. The “Insert Picture” icon (labeled 1 in Figure 1) simply allows you to browse to the image file, something you can do via the menu as well (Insert, then Picture, then From File). The “Color” icon (labeled 2 in Figure 1) allows you to change your picture to Grayscale, Black and White, or Washout. Washout is a good choice if you are going for a watermark effect. The “Contrast” icons (labeled 3 and 4 in Figure 1) are pretty self-explanatory - the first one increases contrast, the second one decreases contrast. Similarly, the “Brightness” icons (labeled 5 and 6 in Figure 1) control brightness, with the first one increasing brightness, the second one decreasing brightness. The “Crop” icon (labeled 7 in figure 1) allows you the ability to crop an image. Click on the image to select it, then click the crop icon. Your cursor will change to look like the crop icon. Move your cursor to a corner or a side of the image, left-click, and drag. The portion of the image you have selected with you click-and-drag will be cropped out. The “Rotate Left 90o” icon (labeled 8 in Figure 1) does just that; it rotates the image 90o. The “Line Style” icon (labeled 9 in Figure 1) allows you add a border by choosing a line style for the drop-down menu that appears when you left-click the icon.
The “Compress Picture” icon (labeled 10 in Figure 1) is a great new feature, unavailable in the 2000 version of Microsoft Office. It allows you to lower your image file size dramatically by compressing the image. The dialogue box (Figure 2) shows your options. “Apply to” allows you to compress either the selected picture or all the pictures in your presentation. “Change resolution” gives you the choice of lowering resolution to either 200 dpi (or dots per inch) for print, or 96 dpi for websites and documents that will be viewed solely on a monitor. If you’ve cropped a picture, use the “Delete cropped areas of pictures” option, which will discard the unused portions of your image, rather than merely hiding them. The “Text Wrapping” icon (labeled 11 in Figure 1) allows you to wrap text around an image - as I’m doing now - insert it behind the image, in front of the image, to the top and bottom of an image. You can also customize how you want the text to wrap by using the “Edit Wrap Points” options, which allows you to drag and drop your wrap points to wherever you like. This is particularly useful for irregularly shaped images.
Figure 2 - the “compress Pictures” dialogue box
The “Format Picture” icon (labeled 11 in Figure 1) gives you a host of options to work with. Clicking this icon brings up a dialogue box with six tabs on it. Many of the options in this dialogue box duplicate the functions of the other icons in the picture toolbar (e.g. brightness, contrast, rotation, line style, text wrapping). I’d like to point out one of the more useful ones - resizing your picture. Clicking on the “Size” tab (Figure 3) and using the “Scale” section allows you to resize your picture without stretching it horizontally or vertically. Make sure the “Lock Aspect Ratio” option is checked. Then work with the height or width of the image, shown as a percentage of the original. Your picture will be resized, but the end result will retain the proportions of the original.
Figure 3 - the “Format Picture Size” dialogue box
The “Set Transparent Color” icon (labeled 13 in Figure 1) is very useful. It allows you to set a background color of an image to transparent. So if, for instance, you were inserting a logo with a white background (Figure 4) into a PowerPoint presentation, you could set the background color to transparent, thereby allowing the PowerPoint pattern to be seen through the background (Figure 5). Simply click on the image to select it, then click on the “Set transparent color” icon,” then click on the color you want to make transparent.
Figure 4 - Logo before setting transparency
Figure 5 - Logo after setting transparency
I’ve saved the best for last! The “Reset Picture” icon ((labeled 14 in Figure 1) allows you to start over if you’ve hopelessly messed up your image and need to start from scratch. Simply click it, and your image will revert to its original state. As always, if you have any questions about this process, or want me to walk you through it, please don’t hesitate to call me at 719-549-2045, or email me at jwood@coop.ext.colostate.edu.