Select the View tab on the Ribbon, and then click the Slide Master button to open Slide Master view (see Figure 6.4).

Figure 6.4. In Slide Master view.

Select the Slide Master on the left pane; the Slide Master is the larger thumbnail on the left, whereas all the smaller thumbnails below the Slide Master are for the Slide Layouts.

While still in Slide Master view, click the Insert tab on the Ribbon, and then click Picture. This brings up the Insert Picture dialog box that you can see in Figure 6.5.

Figure 6.5. Insert a picture in the Slide Master.

Select the Halloween_back.jpg picture from the Makeover 05Pictures folder on the CD with this book, and then click Insert. You’ll see the picture inserted within the Master.

If the inserted picture does not fill the entire slide area, select the picture and drag any of the selection handles on the picture to resize it to fit the slide area. Right-click the picture, and choose Send to Back.

With the picture still selected, you should see the Picture Tools Format tab on the Ribbon. Click this tab, and click the Recolor button to view the Recolor gallery shown in Figure 6.6.

Figure 6.6. Recolor the inserted picture.

Choose the first recolor variation (the ToolTip shows Text color 2 Dark when you hover over it with your mouse) within the Dark Variations section.

Click the Slide Master tab on the Ribbon, and explore all the Slide Layouts visible under the active Slide Master, as shown in Figure 6.7. You’ll see that some of them don’t show your inserted Halloween picture at all!

Figure 6.7. Some slides don’t show the inserted picture because the Hide Background Graphics option is checked.

Select the offending Slide Layout thumbnail, and uncheck the Hide Background Graphics check box in the Slide Master tab of the Ribbon (refer to Figure 6.7). Repeat the same process for all Slide Layouts so that they now sport Halloween backgrounds.

Click the Slide Master tab of the Ribbon, and then click the Close Master View button at the end of the Ribbon. Save your presentation.

Click the Design tab on the Ribbon, and click the Fonts button to view the Fonts gallery (see Figure 6.8).

Figure 6.8. Office 2007 applications come with coordinated Theme Font sets.

All the existing options in this gallery are Theme Font sets that you can apply to the open presentation with one click. For now, ignore these existing Theme Font sets and choose the last option in the gallery, Create New Theme Fonts.

This brings up the dialog box of the same name, as you can see in Figure 6.9.

Figure 6.9. Create your own Theme Font set here!

Select the Heading font; for this example, I chose Tw Cen MT as the heading font within the Heading font drop-down list.

Select the Body font; for this example, I chose Tw Cen MT Condensed as the body font within the Body font drop-down list.

If you don’t have these fonts on your system, you can use any other font that you think matches the mood of the presentation.

Give a name to your new Theme Font set. I called mine Halloween Fonts, but you can choose any other name.

Click the Save button on the QAT (or press Ctrl + S) to save your presentation.

Click the Design tab on the Ribbon, and click the Fonts button to view the Fonts gallery that you can see in Figure 6.10.

Figure 6.10. Apply a Theme Font set.

Click a Theme Font set within this gallery; if you created your own Theme Font sets, these should be visible here as well.

If you are not happy with the choice, you can opt to apply another Theme Font set, or you can press Ctrl+Z to undo the new font choice.

Click the View tab on the Ribbon, and click Slide Master to get to the Master Editing view (refer to Figure 6.4 earlier in this chapter).

Within the Slide Master, click the active Master thumbnail (the larger thumbnail) in the Slides pane.

Select the Slide Title placeholder.

Click the Home tab on the Ribbon, and within the Font group, click the Bold option.

View all the Slide Layouts within this Slide Master to make sure that all slide titles are bold. Don’t worry about the color of the slide titles for now; we’ll look at colors in the next step of this makeover.

Click the Slide Master tab of the Ribbon, and click the Close Master View button.

Save your presentation.

Click the Design tab on the Ribbon, and click the Colors button to view the Theme Colors gallery (see Figure 6.11).

Figure 6.11. Your theme colors might be different than what is shown here.

Choose the Create New Theme Colors option to bring up a dialog box of the same name, as shown in Figure 6.12.

Before

After

Figure 6.12. These dialog boxes show how the theme colors changed before and after I entered new color values.

Toward the left of each swatch is an explanation of what that color signifies within a PowerPoint presentation; to learn more about these, refer to “The Twelve Theme Colors” section later in this chapter.

Click the down arrow next to each individual swatch, and you’ll see a small color palette, as shown in Figure 6.13.

Figure 6.13. Click the More Colors option in the color palette.

Click the More Colors option to bring up the standard Windows color picker dialog box, which you can see in Figure 6.14.

Figure 6.14. Enter the RGB color values provided in the table on this page.

Click the Custom tab in the dialog box, and enter the RGB values for each of the 12 swatches, as shown in Table 6.1. You won’t have to change the Text/Background – Dark 1 and Text/Background – Light 1 colors, because they’re the same as the original swatches.

Click OK after you type in your color values for each individual swatch.

Name your Theme Color set in the Name text box (refer to Figure 6.12). Call it Halloween Colors or something similar, and then click the Save button to get back to your slide.

The new Theme Color set now is saved within your presentation. It also is applied to the presentation.

Click the Design tab on the Ribbon, and click the Background Styles button to view the gallery shown in Figure 6.15.

Figure 6.15. Change the background color, and PowerPoint changes the text color, too.

As you hover your cursor over the 12 background options in this gallery, you will see some changes preview in the active slide.

Each background style has a name that you can see as a ToolTip when you hover your cursor over its thumbnail in the Backgrounds gallery (refer to Figure 6.15). Choose the style named Style 11, and your text suddenly will be much more readable.

Save your presentation.

Click the View tab on the Ribbon, and click the Slide Master button to view the presentation in Slide Master view (refer to Figure 6.4 earlier in this chapter).

In the Slides pane on the left side of the screen, you’ll find a set of slides identified by one large thumbnail (the Slide Master) and several smaller thumbnails (the Slide Layouts). If your presentation includes more than one Slide Master, you’ll find several such Master and Layout sets.

Scroll down the Slides pane to see all the layouts. You’ll find four picture Slide Layouts, which can be identified by the large, empty boxes that currently are empty picture placeholders. As you hover your cursor over any of them, you’ll see that the ToolTip provides a name for the layout (see Figure 6.16).

Figure 6.16. Each layout has a name, as you can see in the ToolTip.

It is helpful to give the layouts more descriptive names. To do that, right-click on the Slide Layout that you want to rename, and choose Rename Layout, as shown in Figure 6.17.

Figure 6.17. Change the name of the Slide Layout.

This brings up the Rename Layout dialog box, as shown in Figure 6.18. Change the default name to a nice, descriptive name. I chose Large, Wide Picture with Caption, but you could choose anything else.

Figure 6.18. Provide a name you like.

Rename all the picture Slide Layouts (or even all the Slide Layouts) the same way.

Now it’s time to create a new Slide Layout. Select the active Slide Master thumbnail in the Slides pane, and click the Insert Layout button on the Slide Master tab of the Ribbon.

You’ll find a new Slide Layout thumbnail in the tree within the selected Slide Master, as you can see in Figure 6.19.

Figure 6.19. Adding a new Slide Layout.

Right-click this layout and choose Rename Layout (refer to Figure 6.18).

Give a name to the layout. For example, I just called it My New Picture Layout 01, but you could call it anything you want.

Click the View tab on the Ribbon, and choose the Slide Master option. In the Slides pane, select the new Slide Layout that we created in the preceding section.

If you did not follow the preceding section and instead opened the halloween_07.pptx presentation from the CD, the Slide Layout you want is the one at the bottom of the other layouts.

Select one or more picture placeholders on the Slide Layout. If you have more than one picture placeholder, you can select the first placeholder, then hold the Shift key and select the other placeholder, and repeat the steps for any more picture placeholders.

Right-click the selected picture placeholders and choose Format Shape (or Format Object) to bring up the Format Shape dialog box (see Figure 6.23).

Figure 6.23. The default settings in the Format Shape dialog box.

Click Fill on the left, and opt for a Solid fill. Click the Color button to view the Theme Colors, and select the black swatch at the top left.

Next, click Line Color on the left, and choose the Solid line color. Click the Color button to view the theme colors, and select the Accent 1 color (yellow in this theme). See Figure 6.24.

Figure 6.24. Select a line color.

Click the Close button to get back to your slide layout.

Next, let’s add some reflection to the picture placeholders. To do that, select one or more of the picture placeholders. Then, click the Drawing Tools Format tab on the Ribbon. Click the Shape Effects option to view the Effects gallery shown in Figure 6.25.

Figure 6.25. The Effects gallery lets you add sophisticated effects with one click.

Choose the Reflection option to view the Reflection subgallery (refer to Figure 6.25). Within the Reflection subgallery, explore the options in the Reflection Variations section. I chose the top-left option to provide a very subtle reflection effect.

Click the Slide Master tab on the Ribbon, and click the Close Master View option to get back to the default PowerPoint interface. Save your presentation.

Make sure that the visible slide in Normal view is the one for which you want to change the Slide Layout. For now, I am choosing slide 3 (see Figure 6.26) because it has two tall pictures like the new Slide Layout we created in the preceding steps.

Figure 6.26. This is how the slide looks in its existing layout.

Tip

When you apply a new Slide Layout from the Layout gallery (refer to Figure 6.27), it is applied by default to the active slide. That should be fine in this case, but if you want to apply the same Slide Layout to multiple slides, you need to select all the slides that you want to change within Slide Sorter view. Then follow the rest of the steps in this step sequence.

Figure 6.27. The layouts you create can be the layouts you apply!

Click the Home tab on the Ribbon, and then click the Layout option to open the Layout Gallery shown in Figure 6.27. Note that the new picture Slide Layout that you created now shows up within this drop-down gallery (see the last layout in Figure 6.27).

Click the picture Slide Layout in the Layout gallery that you want to apply to the selected slide (or slides). If you don’t like the layout you chose, or if you clicked the wrong layout, press Ctrl+Z to undo the last step.

Sometimes, applying a Slide Layout alters the orientation of pictures already inserted in the slides. For example, a landscape-oriented picture might show up in your portrait-oriented picture placeholder. To correct this, simply resize the placeholders, or change the pictures within the placeholders to ones that fit the placeholder on the slide itself.

Continue following steps 1–4 until you have finished applying new Slide Layouts to all the slides you want to update. Tweak the placeholders if the picture orientations change, as explained in step 4.

View the Slide Master of the presentation by clicking the View tab on the Ribbon and clicking the Slide Master button.

Select any one of the picture Slide Layouts in the Slides pane. Most of the time, you will have trouble selecting the objects on the Slide Layout itself, including some title placeholders, because the reflection effects added to the picture placeholders earlier in this makeover might be placed over the titles as well. This isn’t always noticeable because most of the reflections are quite transparent.

To rectify this, select each of the picture placeholders, right-click, and click the Send to Back option in the resulting context menu. Do this on all Slide Layouts that contain picture placeholders.

Next, select the new picture Slide Layout that you created earlier in this makeover. Click the Title placeholder. Select all the text within the title and right-click to access the mini toolbar shown in Figure 6.28. As you can see in the figure, the font size is 32.

Figure 6.28. Change the font size of the title placeholders.

Select the title placeholders in all the other picture Slide Layouts, and change their font sizes to 32 as well. Don’t worry if some of the title placeholders look out of place; we’ll fix that soon.

Remove the footer, slide number, and date placeholders from all the picture Slide Layouts, if you want. It’s not necessary to remove these unless you like to have them out of the way. To do this, make sure that the Slide Master tab on the Ribbon is active, and uncheck the Footers option.

Resize and reposition all the title placeholders as required. You might want to give them a larger area for the increased font size. Whatever you do, make sure that all the title placeholders are sized and positioned consistently across all the Slide Layouts. That’s easy to do if you note the size and position values found on the Size tab of the Size and Position dialog box. Access this box by selecting the placeholder, right-clicking, and choosing the Size and Position option (see Figure 6.29).

Figure 6.29. Make a note of your new Size and Position coordinates.

After you clean up the title placeholders, you might want to reposition other elements as well. For example, you might want to reposition the text boxes for subtitles or captions, change their font sizes, and add reflections to text. Why would you want to add reflections to text? Because it looks trés cool!

Remember that you can add the effect to all titles or placeholders in a presentation by formatting the appropriate placeholder in the Slide Master.

As soon as you select the title placeholder, a new tab called Drawing Tools Format is visible on the Ribbon. Click this tab.

In the WordArt Styles group, click the down arrow next to the Text Effects button to open a gallery. Select the Reflection option to open a subgallery (as shown in Figure 6.30).

Figure 6.30. Add reflected text.

You can choose from any of the reflection options. For the purposes of our makeover, choose the top-middle option called Half Reflection, Touching.

If you are in Slide Master view, click the View tab on the Ribbon, and click Normal. Remember to save your presentation.

Draw a shape or a line. Add effects and color fills to shapes or lines and place them over the pictures, or just slightly overlap the edges of the pictures.

Create your own simple graphics using another program, such as Windows Paint. You also can use a more advanced program such as Adobe Photoshop to create graphics for your layout and save them as PNGs with transparent backdrops. Place those PNGs on the slide wherever required. Duplicate the same PNG several times, and then add variation to the duplicated PNGs by resizing and rotating them differently.

Insert small graphics. Choose small pictures with transparent backgrounds from PowerPoint’s Clip Art task pane.

Add small text notes. Add text such as “Wow,” “Awesome,” “Happiness,” and so on, and then format them with WordArt styles.

View the Slide Master of the presentation by clicking the View tab on the Ribbon and clicking the Slide Master button.

Select any of the picture Slide Layouts, and then click the Insert tab on the Ribbon. Click the Picture button to bring up the Insert Picture dialog box. Navigate to wherever you saved the bat image (or go straight to the Makeover 05Pictures folder on the CD), and select the bat3.png file. Click the Insert button to get back to your Slide Layout.

As you can see in Figure 6.35, the bat seems to be enjoying the attention it can get by sitting over the two picture placeholders. Cut him down to size by clicking and dragging one of the corner handles on the bounding box toward the center of the box. Now you can click and drag the bat and place him anywhere you fancy. If you want two bats, just duplicate the existing one by right-clicking it and choosing Copy, and then right-clicking again and choosing Paste. Click and drag it to place it elsewhere on the slide. The second slide in Figure 6.35 shows how interesting this can look.

Before

After

Figure 6.35. How much difference can those bats make?

Using steps 2 and 3, add more bats to the other Slide Layouts in the presentation. In some of the Slide Layouts, you can rotate the bats as you like. After the bat is selected, drag the top green handle as required to rotate it.

Click the Slide Master tab on the Ribbon, and click the Close Master View button to get back to your slides. Save your presentation.

Because we are going to insert a sound clip from Microsoft’s Office Online collection, we need to be sure that the sound inserted is embedded within the presentation file itself, just in case you need to copy the presentation to another computer and discover that the sound no longer plays.

To do that, choose Office Button, PowerPoint Options to bring up a dialog box of the same name. Click Advanced on the left, and scroll down a little on the right side under Save so that you can set the Link Sounds Larger Than parameter. Change that to 1000 kb, as shown in Figure 6.36. Click OK to get back to your presentation.

Figure 6.36. Set the sound file size parameter.

Make sure you are on the first slide of the presentation. Now click the Insert tab on the Ribbon, and click the small arrow below the Sound button to bring up the short list that you can see in Figure 6.37.

Figure 6.37. Bring in the sounds.

Choose the Sound from Clip Organizer option to activate the Clip Art task pane that you see in Figure 6.38. At this point, if PowerPoint asks you for permission to search Microsoft’s online media collection, say yes.

Figure 6.38. A library of sounds.

Type scary in the Search For text box, and click the Go button. Assuming you are connected online, PowerPoint will search Microsoft’s media servers for scary sounds and show you the results within the pane (refer to Figure 6.38).

You can preview any of the sounds by right-clicking the sound icon in the pane and choosing the Preview/Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 6.39.

Figure 6.39. Play that eerie sound across all slides.

To insert the sound, right-click the sound icon in the pane, and choose Insert. We chose a clip called Horror Full Mix. PowerPoint will show you a dialog box that lets you decide whether you want the sound to start automatically or when clicked. Choose the Automatically option.

You’ll see a sound icon right in the middle of your slide. In addition, the Ribbon will show you the Sound Tools Options tab, as shown in Figure 6.390. In the Play Sound drop-down list, choose the Play Across Slides option, and check the Loop Until Stopped check box.

You now can drag that sound icon off the slide area to get it out of view.

Save your presentation.