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Photo Albums in PowerPoint

Make great personal photo albums with Powerpoint.

Creating a photo album in PowerPoint 2007 has become very interesting and convenient. The themes, layouts and Quick Styles make formatting the albums a cakewalk.

PowerPoint slideshows aren’t just for projecting on a big screen in front of an audience. You can use PPT to make a great looking photo album to email, show on a web site, turn into a screen saver and may other options.

The obvious use of a PowerPoint photo album is for your travel photos but it can be used for any situation where you’d like annotated photos. Maybe photos of your kids or family or a virtual tour of your new home.

In PowerPoint 2007 you can create your own custom layouts, add different kinds of effects to the photos like a professional designer with just a click of a button.


Create a Photo Album

Let us go through the process of creating a photo album using a template already available in PowerPoint and then modify it according to our taste:

· Open PowerPoint 2007.

· Click Office Button | New | Installed Templates and select “Classic Photo Album” template.

Photo album in PowerPoint (1).jpg image from Photo Albums in PowerPoint at Office-Watch.com

· Click on ‘Create’ button.

· The template will open with few slides showing different layouts for placing the photographs and text.

Photo album in PowerPoint (2).jpg image from Photo Albums in PowerPoint at Office-Watch.com

· There are many ways to customize the album. If you like the existing template then you can simply keep it and just add the photos and text in the placeholder.

· For this select the first slide, click on the photo and press the ‘delete’ button.

Photo album in PowerPoint (3).jpg image from Photo Albums in PowerPoint at Office-Watch.com

· As shown in the instruction (see above screenshot) click the icon to add the required picture.

· Once the image is inserted you can format it in any way. To format the picture select it and click Picture Tools | Format.

Photo album in PowerPoint (4).jpg image from Photo Albums in PowerPoint at Office-Watch.com

· Here you have various options to format like changing the picture’s brightness and contrast, resizing the picture, adding styles to it and changing the alignment as well.

· Next click on the text below the image and edit it accordingly. For example as shown in the screenshot below I’ve inserted a small picture and added a frame to it. I’ve center aligned it. Next I’ve edited the text as “Nature Album” and made it bold.

Photo album in PowerPoint (5).jpg image from Photo Albums in PowerPoint at Office-Watch.com

· Just like you modify the style of the image you can format the text also. For this select the text, go to Home | Font and make the necessary changes.

· If you do not wish to add either text or image in the slide then you can click on the placeholder and press ‘delete’.

· This way you can modify all the slides to customize the photo album template. In the template you can delete the existing slides or add more slides.

· To delete any slide select the slide and press ‘delete’ button.

· To add new slides select the slide before or after which you wish to add the new slide.

· Click on Home | Slides | New Slide.

· As shown in the below screenshot for the new slide you can select any desired layout from the options available.

· Once you select the layout e.g. Album Section it will be inserted by default, below the selected slide.

· You can change the slide placements by dragging and dropping it in the slide list.

Photo album in PowerPoint (6).jpg image from Photo Albums in PowerPoint at Office-Watch.com

· In the new slide again as already explained above you can insert images and text as shown in the below screenshot. Although the selected layout had three placeholders for the image I’ve inserted only two and deleted the third. This way you can easily customize the layouts.

Photo album in PowerPoint (7).jpg image from Photo Albums in PowerPoint at Office-Watch.com

· Now if you do not like the black background of the album and would like to modify it then click on ‘Design’ to change the theme of the album.

Photo album in PowerPoint (8).jpg image from Photo Albums in PowerPoint at Office-Watch.com

· Here you can choose any readily available theme or select a theme and then modify it by changing the background style, colors, etc.

Photo album in PowerPoint (9).jpg image from Photo Albums in PowerPoint at Office-Watch.com

· As shown in the above screenshot as per the chosen theme, background of the album is changed to blue.

· After changing the theme it can be further enhanced by modifying the colors, effects and background as shown in the screenshot below.

Photo album in PowerPoint (10).jpg image from Photo Albums in PowerPoint at Office-Watch.com

· After making the changes to the background the original template is transformed as shown in the screenshot below.

Photo album in PowerPoint (11).jpg image from Photo Albums in PowerPoint at Office-Watch.com

This way you can create a photo album from a template and then modify it as you wish.


Tips & Tricks


Reset Slides

Suppose in the selected template you make changes to the photos and text like changing its alignment and style and then you change your mind and wish to restore the default placements and styles then PowerPoint offers an easy way to do it. Select the required slide or press Ctrl A to select all slides and click Home | Slides | Reset, voila all your modified slides are back to the default settings. But suppose if you have changed the background theme of the template slide then this will not be restored to the default settings. Only the image and text style and placement will be reset.

Photo album in PowerPoint (12).jpg image from Photo Albums in PowerPoint at Office-Watch.com


Duplicate Slide

Suppose you want to reuse an existing slide layout for a new slide then simply right click on the slide thumbnail image and select ‘Duplicate Slide’ from the menu. This will generate another similar slide below the selected slide.

Photo album in PowerPoint (13).jpg image from Photo Albums in PowerPoint at Office-Watch.com


Superimpose Slide Layout

As you have already seen PowerPoint has variety of layouts based on picture placements, picture sizes and text placement. Say you had selected a two picture placeholder layout for a slide and now wish to go for another three or four picture placeholder layout. This can be easily achieved by selecting the required slide and click Home | Slides | Layout and choose the desired layout. As shown in the screenshot below for the current layout which has two picture placeholders I’m choosing a layout with three picture placeholders. Also you can observe in the screenshot that the placeholder sizes are different and it does not have placeholder for text. Also you can opt for either classic photo album background or the existing background for the layout.

Photo album in PowerPoint (14).jpg image from Photo Albums in PowerPoint at Office-Watch.com

As shown in the below screenshot classic black background is applied to the new layout. One of the two images in the earlier layout has been resized to fit the new placeholder size. The additional image place holder has been left blank to insert any new image. As there is no placeholder for text in this layout the text from the earlier layout has been placed on the image itself. This text can be moved, edited or deleted as required.

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Suppose you wish to add a new text box in this slide then click Insert | Text Box. This will insert a text box in the slide and you enter the desired text and modify it accordingly. As shown in the below screenshot I have resized the “Mountain Range” image to accommodate the text box and entered the text “Rocky Mountains”.

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Saving the Photo Album

There are many ways in which you can save the photo album. You can save it in the default presentation format, save it as a PowerPoint show that opens in the Slide Show view, save it as a webpage, jpeg or gif format. A bewildering range of options we’ll be looking at in the near future.

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You can also save the album in PDF (Portable Document Format) or XPS (XML Paper Specification) formats. Of the two PDF is far better choice if only because its much more widely supported.

By saving the album in different formats you will have the option of displaying and using the album for variety of applications like website, blog, etc.

Another simple way to find the various file types available to save the album is to open the ‘Save As’ dialog box. To open the ‘Save As’ dialog box first time when you are saving the file click on Office button | Save. As shown in the below screenshot all available file types with respective file extensions will be displayed. You can choose the suitable type and click on ‘Save’ button.

Photo album in PowerPoint (18).jpg image from Photo Albums in PowerPoint at Office-Watch.com

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