Do you want your pictures to be contained within shapes that look like frames? Or maybe you want to use silhouette style
placeholders for your pictures? Yes, this is possible! In fact, look at Figure 1, below. These custom picture
placeholders were created within PowerPoint 2010, and we used nothing
that's not part of the program. Yes, this process is a little involved. However, we'll hold your hand if you promise to
follow all our steps in sequence!
Figure 1: Custom picture placeholders
We have already covered how PowerPoint enables you to
insert placeholders within a Slide
Layout. Picture placeholders
are one among the various placeholders you can insert. You can do more with them to create custom placeholders, as shown in
Figure 1, above. We used PowerPoint's Combine Shapes commands. These commands are not
available by default within the Ribbon, but you should
enable them as explained in our Add Combine
Shapes Commands to the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) page to follow the rest of this tutorial. Thereafter, follow these
steps to learn more:
- First, add a new Slide
Layout within the Slide Master. With your new Slide Layout active within the
Slide Master View, access the
Slide Master tab of the Ribbon, and
click the Insert Placeholder button, highlighted in red within
Figure 2, below. Then, click the Picture option in the resultant drop-down gallery, as
shown highlighted in blue within Figure 2, below.
Figure 2: Add a picture placeholder- Go ahead and drag and draw to
insert a picture placeholder,
as shown in Figure 3, below. Resize and reposition your placeholder as required.
Figure 3: Picture placeholder within the Slide Layout
Tip: Want to resize or reposition your new picture placeholder precisely? Explore our
Shapes tutorials that explain how you can do these tasks with Shapes.
Picture placeholders are shapes too! What's important though is that you do nothing more than resizing and repositioning at
this time with your picture placeholder, as the Combine Shape options we explore next won't work if the placeholder is further
formatted.
- Access the Home, Insert, or Drawing Tools Format tab of
the Ribbon. You'll find a button called Shapes in any of these tabs. Click the
Shapes button to bring up the Shapes gallery shown in Figure 4, below.
Figure 4: Shapes gallery
Note: The
Drawing Tools Format tab is a
contextual tab. Contextual 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.
- From the Shapes gallery, choose a shape that works well with the corner of your typical
rectangular picture placeholder. We chose the Diagonal Stripe shape (highlighted in
red within Figure 4, above). Now
insert the shape within your slide layout.
We placed it on the top left corner of the rectangular picture placeholder, as shown in Figure 5, below.
We also changed the line attribute of this shape to
No Line.
Figure 5: Playing on a picture placeholder's corner- Why did we set the line attribute of the Diagonal Stripe shape to
No Line? That's because a line may add some extra thickness around the shape area, and may not allow you
to accurately place this shape above the top left corner of your picture placeholder.
- We then duplicated
the Diagonal Strip shape (press Ctrl + D) thrice, and
placed instances on all four corners of the picture placeholder
rotating individual shapes as required, as shown
in Figure 6, below.
Figure 6: Extra Shapes inserted and rotated- Deselect the corner shapes and make sure that the picture placeholder is selected now. Then access the
Drawing Tools Format tab, click the Edit Shape button (highlighted
in red within Figure 7, below).
Figure 7: Edit Shape button- This brings up a sub-menu, as shown in Figure 7, above. Choose the
Change Shape option (highlighted in blue within Figure 7) to
bring up the Shapes gallery. From the Shapes gallery choose another shape, even if you
choose a Rectangle again! Changing the shape to another shape is important. In fact, the next step explained will not be
possible unless you do so.
- With the picture placeholder still selected, click the Edit Shape button again (highlighted
in red within Figure 7, above) to bring up a sub-menu, as shown in
Figure 8, below. Choose the Edit Points option (see Figure 8, again).
Figure 8: Edit Points option selected- Unless you changed the shape in the previous step, you will find that the Edit Points
option will be grayed out.
- You now need to combine the corner shapes with the picture placeholder. This combine feature requires that you
have PowerPoint's Shape Combine commands visible.
- Make sure your picture placeholder is selected. Then select all the inserted corner shapes and click the
Combine Shapes icon within the QAT to bring up a drop-down menu, as shown in Figure 9.
Figure 9: Combine Shapes drop-down menu- Within this drop-down menu, select the Shape Combine option (refer to
Figure 9 above). This results in a custom picture placeholder as shown in Figure 10.
Figure 10: Picture placeholder created using combine shape options- For this tutorial we used the
Shape Combine option. You can even use
the Shape Union,
Shape Intersect, and
Shape Subtract. Results will differ based on
the Shape Combine option you choose and also on the order in which the shapes are selected before they are combined.
Play around with these options.
Note: Not getting the result shown in Figure 10 above? Do you instead see a full solid color
picture placeholder, as shown in Figure 11, below? This may occur depending on whichever slide object you
selected first. If you select any of the corner shapes first, and then the picture placeholder you'll get the results shown
in Figure 11, below. So, always opt for selecting the picture placeholder first and then the corner shapes
to achieve results shown in Figure 10 above.
Figure 11: Picture placeholder with solid color
- When done, access the Slide Master tab of the Ribbon, and click the
Close Master View button as shown highlighted in red within
Figure 12. This will get you back to
Normal View.
Figure 12: Close Master View button- Access the Home tab of the Ribbon and click the Layout
button to bring up the Layout drop-down gallery you see in Figure 13, below. Notice that
your new Custom Layout (highlighted in red within Figure 13) shows
up here, ready to be used to create a new picture slide.
Figure 13: New Slide Layout with the picture placeholder added
Note: The new layouts you create are saved as part of the presentation, and are not available in any other
presentations you create. Other than adding placeholders to your new slide layouts, you can also
change their slide backgrounds.
- Save your presentation often.
