Okay, now we come to the fun part let's play. We're going to open the practice template. I'll show you how to crop and adjust an image inside of PowerPoint. I'll show you the finished examples, how to use an eyedropper to choose text color, adding effects to the text, and how to create and use images without even using a photo. Let's jump in. Alright, so what I've got here is the practice template.

And I've added a blank slide at the beginning. First thing I'm going to do is bring in the uncropped version of the flower that we were working with before. So now I'm going to drag the corner up until the top edge of the photo matches the top edge of the slide. Then I'll do the same for the bottom corner. The other way you can do it as you go up here to height. Actually, I want the height to be exactly 15 inches.

So now we've got it adjusted. What I want you to do is pay attention to the slide preview on the left. So now what I'm going to do is grab the photo and I'm going to slide it back and forth. Now do you see how it moved in the preview? This preview is how the actual image will look once it's exported. So I can continue to manipulate it just by dragging it left and right until I have it the way I wanted.

Okay, say I was going to crop it like that. Now two things I can do. I can either leave it just like this, add my text, any other decorations I want, and simply export it and it'll come out looking just like this preview. Or I can go ahead and crop it directly inside of PowerPoint. Here's how you do that. Click the crop button up at the top right crop, you'll see these little handles on each edge and corner.

So I'm going to drag the left corner in, you have to go slow a little bit until you see where the edge meets. Okay, it kind of snaps into place. So it's pretty easy to do doing on the left side. Now I've gone past the point there so it snaps into place, and then hit crop and it's done. So either way you want to do it and there's a good reason why you might not always want to crop every image inside of PowerPoint. Okay, let's take a look at the next image.

I'm going to shrink this down a little bit. This image is pre cropped square. I've dragged it in. I've added the rectangle for the overlay of soften the edges like we did in the last video. added the text. Now I've also added a little drop shadow.

And there's two ways you can add drop shadows to the text. First highlight the text, go up into the font section, and you'll see this little text shadow button. So I've already added that, so I'm going to remove it. And now you can see how doesn't quite pop as much. Let me add the text shadow to part of the words and leave the other words without the shadow so you can see the difference. See how much that pops.

No pun intended, a poppy pops with a little text shadow. So this image is ready to go. You would just want to add whatever brand new you want and then move on. So let's go to the second one. I've left this image uncropped again, so you can practice with just moving that image while looking at the preview in the side pane. And later on, I'll show you how to export this photo just the way it is.

If you're a rebel and you want something that isn't square Where, and it's okay to do that. Let's take a look at this one. Again, we have this beautiful photo, we have the overlay, and I've softened the edges. Now, you don't always have to do that, but you can. And then for the text here, I've actually in order to choose that color, I've used the eyedropper. So let's go up here to the color selector, go down to eyedropper.

I've selected one of these colors right in the waves. You can see how nicely that blends in with the rest of the image. Let's go to the next one. Now this is really beautiful. I love the way it is but I wanted to add a little emphasis on the Do not delay. So here's what I did.

Highlight the text, right click on the text and click Format, text effects and then this case, go to the text fill and outline You can see I've used a gradient fill. All I've done is selected a preset gradient from what's available here. If you're super creative, you can go ahead and create your own gradients. I've also added the text shadow on the first word meditate. This photo I didn't crop it in advance because I wanted to see the entire photo as I adjusted it. Again, we have text the drop shadow, we have our image and I've added the logo here.

As I edited this, I enlarge the preview pane on the left so I could really see what I was doing. Here's another example. I added an overlay over the water to add even more interest and pop to the text. Here's one where I only used to shape and add a text on top of the shape. Okay, let's use this image and I'll show you the other way to add a drop shadow to the text. Select the text, you want to add the Drop Shadow to right click Format Text Effects come up to shadow.

You can choose a preset. I'll choose that one, you can decide on the color, I'll just stick with black. Then you can adjust the transparency size blur angle. You can spend a lot of time doing this. So play with it a couple times, find some settings you like and then use those from now on. You could spend hours on one photo if you wanted to, but I don't suggest it.

Let's take a look at how that looks. We have a nice subtle drop shadow. It doesn't stand out quite as much as the text shadow but it does add some nice pop to those words. Here's the photo where I manipulated the justification of the text so it more or less follow the lines of the road. I really love this. I think it came out great Here's another example of an image where I use the eyedropper to capture colors in the photo to color my text.

I think it looks wonderful. Here's an example of what not to do. Now, I said at the beginning, I'm not a graphic artist. So when I try and add all these different elements, it comes out looking really clunky. But there's lines there's a heart, there's a box, different texts, different texts colors, doesn't come out really looking good. Which is one of the reasons I like to use those apps I showed you before to create the text and then bring it right into PowerPoint to create my image.

Let me show you what I've done. This is simply one of the images where I formatted the background to be black. I just drag the image in and it's perfect the way it is. Sometimes less is more. Here's another one just on a plain white background where I've dragged in the text. Now you can still manipulate these if you want, you could add a drop Shadow.

Let's go ahead and do that. I could add a little color if I wanted to. That looks pretty good. What do you think? Then, of course, I would want to add my branding to this one. Here's another example.

You could have it in the middle, you could move it around, you can make it bigger. I mean, you can manipulate these just about any way you want to, to make it look the way you want it to look. Okay, here's another example of just using some various assets built into PowerPoint. I've used a texture background, I've created a star and a banner and added text. Again, this is not beautiful. I'm just showing you some of the things that you can do within PowerPoint.

Be sure to make your reservation at one 800 basket weave. Here's an example of some of the shapes and banners that I've created within PowerPoint. These are the actual shapes I use to create the images that are part of your practice folder. At this point, I'm going to add a new blank slide and show you how to format the background. Click New Slide. I'm going to right click on the slide, click Format Background.

Then I can choose from a solid fill in the color I want a gradient fill. Again, you can use a preset gradient or you can create your own. I can choose a picture or texture fill. I can use the file I already have. I can copy something from the clipboard or I can search online. Then I can look at the available textures and choose the one I like.

This one seems a little fishy. Then there's also pattern fill. You can select any pattern and you can color the pattern as you like. So I could make that dark blue can make the background light yellow. Again, there's almost unlimited ways You can create a blank background without a photo to create really fun images for Instagram. So here's what I want you to do.

Go ahead, open your practice template, play with all the images, the backgrounds, the text effects, explore all the possibilities so you can find the way that you like to do it the best. In the next video, I'll show you how to save and export your photos in several different ways. See you there.