Clip art on eLearning slides can look like dumb old clip art (yuck) or like attractive design elements. The effect we should be after is a cohesive design, and clip art can certainly fit in if the designer uses it well. Last month I talked about PowerPoint image editing capabilities and matching and recoloring clip art. This month, I’ll be showing you how to remove clip art backgrounds so that your clip art blends more seamlessly with your project colors.
- Color Me Matching, Part 1
- Color Me Matching, Part 2
Throughout the article, I’m using PowerPoint 2010 and showing PowerPoint 2010 screenshots. PowerPoint 2007 works almost identically.
Removing backgrounds (via Clip Art Surgery)
PowerPoint clip art sometimes comes with backgrounds that you don’t want. One way to eliminate these backgrounds is to surgically remove them — thus, “Clip Art Surgery.” I learned this technique from Tom Kuhlmann’s Rapid ELearning Blog (http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/) and it’s been truly invaluable.
For instance, Figure 1 shows a clip art image with a very busy background. I’d like to use part of the image for a social media lesson but the busy background doesn’t work. And it screams clip art, something I’m trying hard to avoid. (And you should too!)
Figure 1. Microsoft Office clip art image with a busy background
To get rid of the background, I first need to ungroup the image. Ungrouping a Microsoft Office clip art image means breaking it into component objects that I can manipulate individually. Not all clip art images can be ungrouped but those that can, can be selected and removed.
So the first task is to see if the image can be ungrouped. To do this, right-click on the image and look at the Group item (Figure 2). The Group item for the image in Figure 2 is active (not greyed out) so it can be ungrouped.
Figure 2. Clip art image with right-click menu showing that ungrouping is available
When you choose Ungroup, you will first have to click Yes in a dialog box asking if it is OK to covert the image into a Microsoft Office Drawing object. After this, right-click the image again and choose Group>Ungroup. Result: The image separates into myriad component objects (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Ungrouped clip art image, all component objects selected
At this point, you can select objects to remove by clicking on them and deleting them. I find it easiest, when trying to remove background objects, to first click outside of the image to deselect all of the images that are initially selected and then click around the edge to find the big blocks of background objects to delete. Figure 4 shows many of the background objects removed and one selected and ready to remove.
To delete multiple tiny objects, you can often click-and-drag a square around the objects you want to delete. Doing this selects all of the objects that are within the drag area so you can delete them together.
One critical thing to remember when doing clip art surgery is that sometimes you will select and delete the wrong things. No problem. Just click on the undo button and try again!
Once you have all the background elements you want deleted, right-click on the image and choose Group>Regroup so that the image is one object again. That’ll make it easier to move and resize.
Figure 4. Selecting and deleting background objects.
On a related note, when you select objects within the ungrouped image, you can also change their color. For example, if I want to change the color of one of the hands in this image, I can select that object (while it is ungrouped) and chose a new fill color (Figure 5).
Figure 5. Changing the fill color of the selected object
Figure 6 shows the image, with the background removed, used as a design element for my social media lesson.
Figure 6. After “surgery” image used as design element
Removing backgrounds (via Transparency)
Another way to remove backgrounds is to make them transparent. Transparent backgrounds have no color (so the background will be whatever appears behind them on the slide).
For example, let’s say you wanted to use the image in Figure 7 in a biology module for children but prefer a transparent background so it better matches the rest of your design.
Figure 7. Clip art
image with solid background
To make the solid background of the image in Figure 7 transparent, select the image. In the Pictures tab, click the Color button (Recolor button in PowerPoint 2007) and choose Set Transparent Color (Figure 8). Then click on the solid background in the image (Figure 9) and the background becomes transparent (Figure 10).
Figure 8. Setting transparent color
Figure 9. Click on color to be made transparent
Figure 10. Colored background is now transparent
I use this process a lot to remove backgrounds from clip art photo images so that all of the photo images in my lessons have a transparent background. In PowerPoint 2007, it’s easy to remove backgrounds that are a solid color but not all colors that look like a solid color are actually solid. In that case, this technique doesn’t work very well. PowerPoint 2010 makes it easier to remove backgrounds that aren’t quite solid so I’m glad that I switched to PowerPoint 2010 because removing unwanted backgrounds is very critical!
Next month I’ll show more ways to use image-editing tools in PowerPoint to make your images look like part of a cohesive design rather than like “clip art.”
