How to create transparent images in Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint has a small feature in the Ribbon that you may not notice is called Set Transparent Color . This feature can erase a photo's background and turn it into a transparent photo. This tip is very useful if you want to create infographics in PowerPoint.

The Set Transparent Color feature in PowerPoint only works on inserted images, it does not work with images inside the shapes. If your image is inserted inside the Shape, the Set Transparent Color option will not light up to be selectable.

How to set up a transparent background image in PowerPoint

Select the image to edit, double click on it. The Picture Format property section will appear on the Ribbon.

Go to Picture Format > Color . Click the small arrow next to and select Set Transparent Color in the drop-down menu.

Create transparencies in PowerPoint 2016

At this point, the mouse cursor will change to another shape. Choose the color area in the image you want to turn transparent.

To restore the original image, simply click the Reset Picture icon in the same area.

The Set Transparent Color tool sometimes doesn't work perfectly. It is not exactly the same as the Eyedropper tool in Adobe Photoshop and you will encounter 2 problems as follows:

• When you repeat the process of removing the next color, it removes transparency in the first selected color.
• It will also remove the main image area if that part of the image is the same color as your chosen one without a clear partition.

You will not be able to do anything if you encounter the first problem. But the second problem is a very straightforward solution - protect the area of ​​the image that does not want to be transparent by drawing the shape area for it.

Protect image areas that do not want to be transparently transformed with Shape

Use the Freeform tool to draw an image that masks the area of ​​the image you want to keep transparent:

Fill this drawn Freeform area with the background color (black in this example) and move it to the back of the image but above the background. Right-click on this shape and choose Send to Back > Send Backward .

Then set the transparent color.

In older versions of PowerPoint, this Set Transparent Color feature only works on PNG and GIF images. However, you can now modify both PDF and JPEG files. And of course, the simpler the color, the better the results.

If in case you can not delete the background image in PowerPoint, then surely you need a more powerful tool, such as Photoshop for example. You can refer to the following articles to know how:

• Instructions on how to blur the background image in Photoshop
• Guide to delete photo background simply and quickly
• Separate photos from the background without software