Add Texture Fills to Shapes in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows

In previous tutorials, we have covered solid, picture, and gradient fills for shapes in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows. In this tutorial, we finish this series by showing you how you can use Texture Fills. 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 they are different from pictures. After all, both textures and pictures are bitmaps from pixel based formats like JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG, TIFF, etc. The main difference between textures and bitmaps 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

PowerPoint 2007 includes 24 seamless textures which can be applied to any shape, you can even import more 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 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 2007 users can change the slide layout to Blank by selecting Home tab | Layout | Blank.
2. Under the Home or Insert tab of the Ribbon, choose the Shapes button to view the Shape gallery that you can see in Figure 2. Select the Rectangle (or any other shape), and then either drag and draw, or click once on the blank slide to place an instance of the shape.
3. 
   Figure 2: Shapes gallery
3. Select the shape so that the Ribbon area now shows the Drawing Tools Format, as shown in Figure 3. Activate this Ribbon tab.
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 option to view the Shape Fill drop-down gallery that you can see in Figure 4. From the Shape Fill drop-down gallery choose Texture.
5. 
   Figure 4: Shape Fill drop-down gallery
5. This shows you the Texture gallery (refer to Figure 4 above).
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. Doing so opens the Format Picture dialog box that you can see in Figure 5. Select the Fill tab, 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 a 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. Remember to save your presentation often.
Related Link: My book Cutting Edge PowerPoint 2007 For Dummies covers many aspects of PowerPoint 2007. A free chapter excerpt PowerPointing with the Best of Them is available on this site.

Sample Presentation:

Click below to view on YouTube