Add Texture Fills to Shapes in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

We have already shown you how to add solid, picture, and gradient fills to shapes within your PowerPoint 2010 for Windows slides. In this tutorial we'll show you how you can use Texture Fills, which incidentally are not too different from picture fills that can be tiled. If you want to see a sample presentation showing Texture Fills in PowerPoint, scroll down to the bottom of this page.

Before we get into textures, it's important to understand how PowerPoint treats them differently from pictures. Yes, both textures and pictures are bitmaps saved in pixel based formats like JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG, TIFF, etc. The main difference between textures and pictures is that while textures are seamless, bitmaps are not necessarily seamless. Seamless means that if you tile up a texture, it will not show any edges while tiling thus providing an illusion of a seamless expanse.

In Figure 1, the graphic on the left shows how a texture tiles up, while the graphic on the right shows how a regular bitmap that is not seamless tiles up. If you want to see the Figure below in a larger size, click on it to open a new window that shows a larger preview.

Figure 1: Seamless and non-seamless samples

Of course you can also use a non-seamless picture as a texture, almost like the sample on the right in Figure 1 above!

PowerPoint 2010 includes 24 seamless textures which can be applied to any shape, and you can even import more seamless textures that you can buy from third-party providers like Ppted.com.

Follow these steps to change or apply a Texture Fill to a shape:

1. Select the shape(s) that you want to change the fill for. Alternatively, if you just want to follow this tutorial step-by-step, launch PowerPoint. Most of the time, PowerPoint will open with a new slide in a presentation, PowerPoint 2010 users can change the slide layout to Blank by selecting Home tab | Layout | Blank.
2. Within the Home or Insert tab of the Ribbon, choose the Shapes button to view the Shapes gallery that you can see in Figure 2. Select any shape, and then either drag and draw, or click once on the blank slide to place an instance of the shape (we used a heart shape as you can see later in Figure 2).
3. 
   Figure 2: Shapes gallery
3. Select the shape so that the Ribbon area now shows the Drawing Tools Format tab, as shown in Figure 3. Activate this Ribbon tab by clicking on it.
4. 
   Figure 3: Drawing Tools Format tab of the Ribbon
Note: The Drawing Tools Format tab is a Contextual tab, These tabs are special tabs in the Ribbon that are not visible all the time, they only make an appearance when you are working with a particular slide object which can be edited using special options.
4. From the Drawing Tools Format tab, locate the Shape Styles group, then select the Shape Fill button to view the Shape Fill drop-down gallery that you can see in Figure 4. From the Shape Fill drop-down gallery choose the Texture option.
5. 
   Figure 4: Shape Fill drop-down gallery
5. This shows you the Texture sub-gallery (refer to Figure 4).
6. You can either choose any of the visible textures from this Texture gallery, or click the More Textures option that can be found right below all the texture previews (refer to Figure 4 above).
7. This opens the Format Picture dialog box that you can see in Figure 5. Make sure that the Fill tab is selected, then click the radio button next to Picture or Texture Fill.
8. 
   Figure 5: Format Picture dialog box
8. Click the downward arrow next to the Texture option to open the same Texture gallery that we visited earlier. If you are using a third-party texture collection, such as the one from Ppted.com, click the File button under Insert from options. Make sure you check the option that says Tile picture as texture (see Figure 5).
9. In the same dialog box (see Figure 5), you'll find several Tiling options, these are explained on the Tiling Options page.
10. Finally, choose the transparency value in the slider. You can also check the box that says Rotate with shape, this option rotates the Texture Fill when the container shape is rotated.
11. When done, click Close to apply the texture to the shape. In Figure 6 below, you can see the previously selected heart shape with added Texture Fill.
12. 
    Figure 6: Shape with Texture Fill
12. Remember to save your presentation often.

Sample Presentation:

Click below to view this presentation on SlideShare

Click below to view this presentation on YouTube