http://www.carlkwan.com As promised, here's the tutorial on using a picture as a PowerPoint background. This also works for anyone like me who uses Apple's Keynote. Why should you do this? Well, if your slides stand out from normal presentation slides, your presentation will stick better in the audience's mind. In the slides, you'll see the following... 1. Slides from a real presentation that I fixed and added pictures for the backgrounds. 2. You'll see the Before, then I’ll show you how to get from the Before to the After. The steps I took can be done in PowerPoint or Keynote. The slides in the example presentation were all made in PowerPoint for Mac. Don't worry, as pretty much everything in the PC version of PowerPoint does the same thing. So here are the six steps I took: 1. Alignment is a fast way to make a presentation more professional looking; use a left-align as your default to avoid design faults. 2. Use pictures that are relevant to your topic; make sure the picture size is the same or bigger than your slide size. 3. If a picture doesn’t have good colours, change it to black and white. 4. Make your titles bigger to create contrast and to help the audience see better. 5. Don't trap text in a bordered text box... Set it free! 6. Use a black box set at 75% transparency to use as a background for your text.

1. Tutorial:
How to use a picture as a
PowerPoint background

2. Why should you do this?
Well, if your slides stand out from
normal presentation slides, your
presentation will stick better in the
audience's mind.

3. Like peanut butter on the roof of your mouth.

4. So here’s what I’m going to do...
I’m going to show you slides from a real presentation that I
fixed and added pictures for the backgrounds.
I’ll start by showing you the Before.
Then I’ll show you how to get from the Before to the After.

5. Let’s do it!

6. Before

13. After

14. 1. First, alignment is a fast way to make a presentation more professional looking; use a left-
align as your default to avoid design faults.
I also changed the background colour to one of their own colours to make it stand out, but
it’s not necessary.

15. 2. The picture is relevant to the topic and the size is the same or bigger than the slide.
3. The picture was in colour but it looked bad, so I made it black and white.
4. I made the title bigger to create contrast and to help the audience see better, too.
5. I took out the text box to create more openness and space.

16. 6. I used a black box set at 75% transparency to use as the background for the text.
And if you look back at the previous slide, you’ll see I used a box set at 90%
transparency for the main text.

17. This is a table, but for privacy I removed the contents.
Aside from changing the colour, I used a bigger title and I aligned the table’s edge with the text.
I had to make the table a bit smaller, but not a big deal.
And I added a shadow to make the table stand out better.

18. On this one, I did everything I’ve taught you but you can see I kept the original’s text boxes
to save time.
And I moved the text down to accommodate the picture of the kids.

19. And on this last one, I’ve used the black box set at 75% transparency, a bigger title, and I’ve
left-aligned the text.
The key is having the right pictures, which can be time consuming to search for, but well
worth it considering the results you can achieve.

20. So here it is again...
1. Alignment is a fast way to make a presentation more professional looking; use a left-align as your default
to avoid design faults.
2. Use pictures that are relevant to your topic; make sure the picture size is the same or bigger than your
slide size.
3. If a picture doesn’t have good colours, change it to black and white.
4. Make your titles bigger to create contrast and to help the audience see better.
5. Don't trap text in a bordered text box... Set it free!
6. Use a black box set at 75% transparency to use as a background for your text.

21. www.carlkwan.com