I need help, quick!

[[Director] Joseph B]

I have it as a transparent gif but there is a black shadow (the drop shadow turns completely black). The rest of the background is clear.

[tedanderson]

Originally Posted by WORDpictures

Rarely use Powerpoint, though years ago I did use a Powerpoint tool that allowed me to select a color within the image that I wanted to go transparent (such as a white background as long as nothing else in the image is the same color). It might be a bit crude on edges though but that could be another technique to check into.

Look up "transparent color" in the manual for this technique.

You beat me to it.

Go back to using the bullet that had the white background. Paste it into Powerpoint and then select the picture (where it shows the 8 tiny squares indicating that it's in the edit/resize mode) and then make sure that the "picture" toolbar is enabled. On the picture toolbar, the last item on the right looks like a pen with the tip inside of a small box. Use that tool to click in the white area of your pasted image and it will make it transparent.

[Chris3jam]

Thanks! It did leave a white border around it, but it may just work. I may just end up drawing a circle around the words I want on that button, but I just wish there was a way to add a shadow to it.

[Gene]

I recall a 'gotcha' with images with transparency in Powerpoint (at least older versions):

Note that in Powerpoint you need to do Insert / Graphic / From File... to place the image on a slide the first time in a file. Once it's there you can copy and paste it, but if you copy it from another application first it loses the transparency.

This from some PNGs I created to darken part of the background in Powerpoint slides:

[[Admin] osborn4]

Ah yes. I'm remembering the shadow problem now.

I've been working mostly in SSP Slide Show Builder, so my PPT knowledge isn't what it used to be.

[Chris3jam]

Well, I took off the shadow, made the background layer black, and inserted it into the PPT, and then made the black transparent. That gives me the illusion of a shadow, since that little bit around the 'button' is black, instead of white. Thank you all!

But, I *do* know there is a way to do this. . . .. we've done it before, but I cannot remember, and can't find a tutorial, since I don't know what it is called.

[tedanderson]

One other thing.. you could probably find a circle of sorts in your MS Office Clipart gallery. Most of those images are vector-based transparent background images.

Or even better, you can create WordArt, use a bullet character on the text line and then use the format settings to give it the shadow, gradients, depth and other aspects of the bullet.. fully transparent and nice clean edges.