SnagIt is a great tool for screen capture.
Here is the way I use it – to capture ideas for future blog articles.
Estimated reading time 7 min
Tag Archives: Image editing
Photo Makeover in Minutes using PowerPoint
Often we get photos showing your face or selfies. Usually you cannot use these photos for formal scenarios. Here is a quick way of salvaging informal photos and giving them a professional look.
Powerpoint Crop Secrets: How to Crop – Part 2
Please read How to crop images and videos? before reading this article. We continue to explore more PowerPoint’s little-known crop features.
Continue reading Powerpoint Crop Secrets: How to Crop – Part 2
How to crop images and videos?
Do you think you already know how to crop? You are wrong – most probably. There is much more to cropping than what we think we know. I was also surprised when I learnt it myself. Explore this and decide for yourself!
Merging Shapes – Part 2
Please read the article Show Off Demo: Create new shapes in PowerPoint first. This is the second article in the series.
Let us explore the merging options in greater detail. This article is based upon PowerPoint 2013 capabilities.
Show Off Demo: Merging shapes in PowerPoint
PowerPoint has been providing us with a fixed set of shapes for decades. Many of us wanted more shapes. But they did not add more shapes. They gave us a new feature which literally gives you unlimited number of shapes – without adding a single new shape.
Learn how to do it and impress your friends and colleagues.
Continue reading Show Off Demo: Merging shapes in PowerPoint
Reduce PowerPoint file size by compressing ALL images in one go
Presentations containing lot of photos or images tend to be very large in size. It makes them unmanageable and often impossible to send by mail. Yes, you can compress images one by one, but since Powerpoint presentations usually contain lots of images, it would be a tiresome and furstrating job.
But fear not! There is an solution!
You can compress ALL photos / images in ONE step!
Continue reading Reduce PowerPoint file size by compressing ALL images in one go
Artificial Intelligence at work: Remove Background (Office 2010 and above)
Quick Feed
Remove Background is available across Office tools from version 2010 onwards. It helps you remove unwanted parts of pictures quickly and easily – without using any external photo editing software. If you like these examples, go ahead and read how to do it.
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How to remove background?
Very simple.
- Click on the picture – Choose Picture Tools from the top menu (ribbon)
- Choose the first option from left is Remove Background
- The picture will not be analyzed and some part of it will become dark pink.
Dark Pink part will be removed and become transparent.
- It shows an adjustable rectangle in the picture. Resize it so that the area of your interest is fully within the rectangle.
- Now click Keep Changes
This works for simple pictures. For more complex pictures it requires some adjustments.
Refining the background removal
The logic of detecting what is foreground and what is background is based upon very sophisticated mathematics. It is very intelligent. But in case of complex pictures it needs some help from you.
Consider this picture where the rectangle already encompasses the object of interest.
It has removed most of the image but some part of the twig is still retained. Now we need to assist the Remove Background feature.
The menu gives you multiple options.
In this case, we need to specify – visually- that the branch (twig) should have been removed. For finer adjustments – it is a good idea to ZOOM IN to the picture.
Click Mark Areas to Remove and then just draw a line across the unwanted portion. Be careful not to extend the line into the areas you want to keep.
Few such adjustments are enough to get what you want.
The Science behind it
The mathematical algorithm behind this feature is very complex. It is called GrabCut. It was created by researchers from Microsoft Research. For those interested in the details, the research paper can be downloaded from here. We must thank and appreciate the researchers Carsten Rother, Vladimir Kolmogorov, and Andrew Blake for creating this amazing feature.
Practical Example
Download and view this presentation. Run the presentation. It has only one slide. Click on the slide to run the animation. The text appears to originate from behind the buildings.
How is that done? Edit the presentation and learn how it was done. This is a smart way to use remove background to achieve an impossible sounding effect.
Skyline Presentation Download
Tight Wrap in Word – How to wrap text around images with irregular borders
In the last post, I had posted a quiz. We already have a winner (Nicholas) and the gift will be sent to him.
The question was the difference between SQUARE and TIGHT wrap around a picture or object in Word.
If the picture is rectangular – which most pictures are – there is no visual difference.
But if the picture has an irregular shape, TIGHT option wraps around the shape and SQUARE wraps around the rectangle.
Here is the difference…
Things are much simpler if it is an irregular shaped clipart…
Question: How do you create a picture with irregular borders?
Most pictures have rectangular border. If the picture has a transparency around an object, it has irregular borders. Most standard pictures, captured from cameras or downloaded from Microsoft Clipart are rectangular with NO transparency.
So how do you create transparency to retain what we want?
Here is an example. The original picture in the above logo was like this – with a white background. (I have put a border to illustrate the boundary of the picture)
The white area around the actual logo is unwanted – and therefore, should be transparent. How do we do that?
- Click on the picture (double clicking the pictures opens the menu)
- Choose Picture Tools menu
- Choose Remove background (Office 2010 and above)
- Now PowerPoint attempts to guess what could be the foreground and what should be removed. It indicates the outcome as an altered image as shown below. The pink portions would be removed (make them transparent) and rest would be kept.
- Readjust the inner rectangle to enclose the logo completely within it. Click on Keep Changes Button.
- Now it is a transparent picture. Whatever was shown in pink color has been converted to transparency.
- Now using the TIGHT option wraps text around the irregular shape.
Refine the wrapping with Edit Wrap Points
