The PowerPoint Blur Trick

Today's post comes courtesy of Ric Bretschneider, PowerPoint MVP, former PowerPoint Senior Program Manager, and now contributor to the PowerPoint Blog. Take a look at Ric's blog at http://ricbret.wordpress.com/ .

Hi, I'm Ric Bretschneider. You might remember me from...well, the very first entry in the PowerPoint team blog back in 2006 and a lot of tips and tricks articles after that. I left the PowerPoint team and Microsoft about a year ago, but I'm still very involved with helping people become better presenters, and make better presentations.

I'm very pleased that the PowerPoint Blog team invited me back to share an article, written earlier this year on my personal blog, called The PowerPoint Blur Trick. You can add texture or blur the background of a picture using the Artistic Effects feature in PowerPoint 2010, leaving the foreground crisp and clear.

The Blur trick focuses on three features:

Background Removal - Allows you to eliminate portions of a photo easily, typically leaving an object in the foreground

Artistic Effects - Which apply various visual distortions to photographs

Selection Pane - Makes it easy to identify and select shapes and images on a slide

Take a look, and leave a comment to let me know what you think. I hope you find this technique useful in creating pictures that pop a little bit more on your slides.

-- Ric Bretschneider