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Learn how to edit images in PowerPoint.

In this example, we'll demonstrate how to crop an image and save it as a new file to be used in other applications.

Transcript
Welcome to Teaming for Technology’s tip #70. Today we’re working with PowerPoint and I’m going to show you a couple tips on working with images. Now, PowerPoint was designed for presentations, of course, but it’s useful for all sorts of other stuff. This is one of those “other” situations.

Specifically, I’m going to demonstrate how to crop an image and show you how to save it as a new image. I’ll start by opening up PowerPoint and adding a new blank slide. We’ll add an image to the slide by heading up to the Insert Tab and clicking on ‘Picture.’ You’ll notice that as soon as I click on the image, a new tab appears above. You’ll see the Picture Tool heading with a new tab called Format.

Our goal will be to crop the U.S. map image down to just the state of Colorado. So I’ll begin by clicking on the image to get our Format Tab appearing above. In the upper right you’ll see the crop tool. As soon as I click on the crop tool, the handles on our image change to black bars signaling that we’re now in crop mode. By clicking and dragging any of those handles, I can crop our image. I’ll click the right side of the image and drag it in to the Colorado border and then let up on the mouse button. Then I’ll do the same on the other sides to end up with just Colorado.

Clicking off the image will remove the crop tool handles. Now to save this edited image as a new file, we just need to right-click on the image and select ‘Save as Picture.’ The ‘Save as’ window will appear giving us several options for file type. Today we’ll use PNG and rename the file. There it is. The individual state of Colorado image is now its own file.

To demonstrate how this works, I’ll wipe our slide clean by deleting the image from the slide. Then head up to the Insert Tab again and insert just the new Colorado file. There you have it. We can now resize this image, add graphics to it, etc. And then of course we have the option to save this new creation as its own file, as well.

Just to remind you of some of the other features PowerPoint has to offer when working with images: Click on your image to get the Format Tab to appear. You’ll see several Picture Styles and other features. Feel free to play around with all of them to learn what they do. And then after you’ve completed your editing, right-click on the image and click ‘Save as Picture’ to save it as its own file (to use in PowerPoint again or any other program).

Thanks for watching T4T’s tip #50 which covered a little bit about how to use PowerPoint to manipulate your images. We’ll see you next time here at T4T.