At times, you may want to insert a "transparent" graphic into a PowerPoint presentation. This means the background color of the graphic "disappears", and the central image lies on the slide background. For example, assume you are working with a presentation that has a dark green background. You want to insert a graphic of a woman. You inherited this particular graphic; you did not create it. When you insert this graphic in your presentation, the white background of the file makes the presentation look amateurish. Instead, you would like the central image (the woman) to appear simply on top of the green slide background. Fortunately, this is easy to accomplish.

Before you begin

You should know two things about transparent graphics:

• You can make only one color transparent.
• This option is not available for all clip art.

To create a transparent graphic

1. Open a PowerPoint presentation.



2. If necessary, insert the desired picture.



3. Select the picture you wish to make transparent.



4. On the Picture toolbar, click Set Transparent Color. The cursor changes.



5. Click the color (in the graphic) you want to make transparent. PowerPoint replaces all instances of this color with the background color.

Printing

When the slide containing the graphic is printed, the transparent areas are white.

Note Sometimes what appears to be one color in a graphic is actually many combined colors. The transparent options replaces only one color with the background color.