Resizing or Cropping a Picture
Screen shots are often useful in a Power Point presentation. They are obtained by tapping the Print Screen Key (in the upper right part of the keyboard) which puts a picture of the current screen on the clipboard. It can then be pasted into any graphical program including Power Point. The cropping tool works for any graphic in Power Point.
There is a difference between cropping and resizing. In cropping, part of the picture is made invisible, in resizing, the entire picture is made a different size.
Usually you will not wish to have the entire screen visible for the presentation, for example the task bar etc. are not often of interest. Also the part of the screen that you wish to show is often too small for the audience to see. To focus on what you wish the audience to see there are several things you can do.
Power Point 2003
To crop the picture:
- Select the graphic from which you wish to extract a smaller part.
- Make sure the drawing tool bar is visible. If not:
- On the menu line click on View>Toolbars
- Click on Drawing
- Click on the crop tool (
) - The image is now surrounded by lines as seen below.
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- Place the mouse pointer on one of the black lines. It will change to a "T". Drag inward. If you go too far you can always drag back.
- Place the mouse pointer on as many sides as needed to crop to the "picture" you need. Continue until only what you want the audience to focus on is visible.
- Click outside the graphic which changes the selection items to the usual dots. (Sometimes the crop bars change back to the regular selected dots because of an inadvertent click somewhere. If this happens just reclick the crop tool with the graphic selected.)
- Enlarge as needed.
Note: The file size of the graphic remains what it was BEFORE the picture was cropped. Thus you can always "uncrop." If you are planning on using the slides on the Web it will be better if you use a tool that reduces the file size of the picture such as Paint that is part of the Accessories in Windows.
Resizing a picture
- Select the picture
- Place the mouse pointer on a corner (If you use a side the picture will be distorted.) The shape will become a double arrow.
- Drag to the appropriate size.
Note: When making a picture larger, it may become grainy if the resolution is not high enough to allow resizing.
If you are resizing the picture to make the file size smaller, use Paint.
Power Point 2007
To crop the picture
- Select the picture
- Click on Format under Picture Tools. (Note this choice is not visible unless the graphic is selected.)
- Click on the Crop tool.
- Place your mouse pointer on any of the black lines that now surround the picture and drag.
- Click anywhere outside of the picture to turn off the crop tool.
A cropped picture can be returned to its regular size by dragging out instead of in.
Using the sniping tool
Vista added a feature that allows you to select a part of the screen that you wish to capture. It's advantage is that it keeps the resulting graphic smaller than cropping. It has two disadvantages:
- The resulting picture has a red border
- There are some screen functions that will disappear as soon as you try to invoke the tool.
If neither of these are a problem, use this tool instead of print screen.
To use the snipping tool, Click on Start>All Programs>Accessories>Snipping Tool
Created June 1, 2009