Tip: How to Blur a Background in Your Photo in PowerPoint 2010

Posted by Dan St. Hilaire  /  October 19, 2011  /  PowerPoint   —   No Comments ↓

Have you ever wanted to blur the background of a photo but you don’t want to use Photoshop? In the video below we show you just how to do this. We’ve also provided a step by step process below. This is an awesome photo technique in PowerPoint. It’s a technique that many designers have been doing in Photoshop. If you don’t have Adobe Photoshop you can still apply this effect. You do need to have Office 2010 (or 2011 for the Mac).

To begin you will need to choose a photograph, the best option is one that has people or an object as the main photo but has a distracting background that you would like to blur out, one that has a depth of field is ideal. For this technique you will use these functions in PowerPoint, Copy and Paste or the Duplicate Command, Background Removal and Artistic Effects.

Step by Step:
1.) Choose your photo. Again one with depth of field is ideal.

2.) Duplicate your image, you can select your image and copy and paste using the Ctrl-C (Copy) and Ctrl-V (Paste) keyboard shortcuts.

3.) Next align your two images. Click your Format Tab, select the Align option, then Align Left and Align Top.

4.) Select your foreground image. The best way to confirm you are selecting the correct images is to click on Select on your ribbon bar and choose Selection Payne. You will now see everything listed on this particular slide. You can rename the selections foreground and background. Select your foreground image, on the format tab select Remove Background option and the select Keep Changes.

5.) Select the background image, Select Artistic Effects and choose Blur.

Topics: PowerPoint