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PowerPoint has a great feature called
background removal that can be used to
remove parts of your picture giving it a
transparent background not only is this
a useful tool it also opens up tons of
creative possibilities here's how it
works first make sure the image is
selected then click the remove
background command on the format tab
don't worry if the picture doesn't look
good yet because we're going to make a
few adjustments the first thing you
should do is click and drag the
selection handles so the foreground
areas are inside the box
right now the background areas are
highlighted bright pink or magenta but
when we're done they'll be removed from
the image altogether with some pictures
PowerPoint needs a little help deciding
which areas to remove and which areas to
keep in this picture we have a couple of
problems most of the roses and also the
stems are being marked as part of the
background so we need to tell PowerPoint
to keep those areas in the picture click
mark areas to keep
then click and drag to create a line
over the area's you want
as you can see PowerPoint will readjust
the image while you work
now it's including part of the
background by accident so we need to
mark this area to remove
that looks better go through the image
and keep marking areas you need if you
make a mistake all you have to do is
click delete mark then click the mark
you want to remove at this point our
foreground subjects look pretty good and
the entire background is highlighted
magenta notice that I've left these two
roses in the background which is going
to remove them from the image too this
is just another way of using the feature
to customize your image you decide
what's part of the background and what's
not so it's completely up to you when
you're ready you just need to exit the
tool click the keep changes button here
and that's it now that the picture has a
transparent background there are lots of
interesting things we can do with it for
example we could place it on top of the
shape or even another picture if you
notice that you've missed something you
can always edit the picture again by
returning to the remove background
command with this very special feature
you can do things in PowerPoint that you
would normally do in a photo editing
program now that you know how it works
make sure you give it a try