How To Remove Background Of A Picture in PowerPoint 2013

Sometimes when you fail to find the right image for your slides, you might require tweaking a picture to match your needs. Not everyone is proficient in using complex picture editing tools like CorelDraw or Photoshop, however, PowerPoint can help you get many basic image editing tasks done as well.

Removing Picture Background in PowerPoint 2013

If you want to learn how to remove the background of a picture in PowerPoint 2013, then here is a quick guide to help you customize images to single out the content you need and get rid of the unwanted background elements.

Remove background in PowerPoint 2013

Select Picture and Click Remove Background

In the first step, click the picture on your slide, go to the Format tab and click Remove Background. For the purpose of this post we will use the Free Blackboard PowerPoint Template. In the image shown below, we want to remove the background and keep the tea cup to make a slide representing a short break between the presentation.

The process is pretty much the same as that of removing a background image in PowerPoint 2010.

Remove picture background in PowerPoint 2013

Mark Areas to Keep and Remove

PowerPoint will probably do most of the job for you by singling out the main image(s) and shading out the background areas, implying that those areas will be removed. However, the good thing is that nothing is final till you click ‘Keep Changes’, which means that you can adjust the areas to keep and remove as per your liking.

Click the Mark Areas to Keep option and select the areas you wish to retain. For example, in the below image some areas of the tea cup were shaded out but I wanted to keep those areas, hence, I used this option to select the portions to keep.

Mark areas to keep and remove

Likewise, you can remove unwanted areas using Mark Areas to RemoveĀ by clicking on this optionĀ and shading out the unwanted areas. For example, I shaded out the letters, bell and portions of the table, as I only wanted to retain the cup for my slide. Once you are satisfied with the changes, click Keep Changes to remove the background.

Mark areas to remove

PowerPoint Slide With Image Without Background

And voila, as you can see I was able to remove the background and retain the cup to create a picture slide to mark a break during a presentation. You can use this method to retain images that best represent your topic and slides and make your presentations more interesting.

background image removed in PowerPoint 2013

Tip: You can also change the background color and tweak the adjacent slide areas to create a custom background version of your own to represent the image. Furthermore, you can also use this simper method to avoid using complex image editing tools for removing image backgrounds, in such a case you can export your images from PowerPoint for use in other projects.

About Farshad

IT professional, communications specialist and Blogger!

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