Background and ideas:
A previous blog entry discusses Word 2007’s ability to turn downloaded clip art into editable content. Building on this idea exponentially extends Office Online Clip Art library content. Grouped and stylized to your own devices, clip art customizes to fit business document color-schemes, or arranges and overlaps within animation storyboards, and on and on.
Again, some good styles (with uncomplicated line and shape) are #1450, #1434, or #1255. Much of Style #1450 appears in the following templates: Aquatic animals, Farm animals, Forest animals, Christmas, and Halloween. And has founds its way into Word themes for the Summer Santa correspondence set.
For this example, here is one page from the Farm animals coloring book:
The scene:
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| Flowers |
A tree |
And various shapes drawn in Word |
The cast:
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| One frog… |
Two frog…! |
A boisterous fowl |
And 1 awed snail |
The video below reviews Word 2007 methods for separating vector clip art. It then shows regrouping, copying, and arranging shapes one in front of another:
Review of these steps:
- Import clip art into a new Word 2007 document.
- Right click on your selected clip. Choose to Edit Picture, and this will show the image highlighted inside a dotted-line bounding box.
- Click and drag the mouse inside this box from one corner to the other to capture the most pieces of the art initially possible.
- On the Ribbon Format tab, change the Shape fill to White, and the Line color to Black.
- This will reveal shapes in the art you might have missed. Keeping all your original shapes selected, Control-click to gather any of the remaining shapes.
- Repeat step 4-5 until you’ve gathered all the visible shapes.
- With all shapes still selected, right click Grouping - Group.
- Copy or Cut your grouped image outside of the bounding box. Delete the bounding box and unwanted images inside of it. (Note: a stray bounding box can cause headaches by pushing around other objects).
- Optional: Right click to Ungroup your art, and re-group it into smaller sets. (Note: Overlapping objects may take practice. Lost objects may have gone behind a larger one. Be prepared to backtrack).
- You can now arrange your art within the overall document Use the Format tab in the Ribbon to Arrange shapes/groups with Bring to Front, Send Backward, etc.
Final suggestions:
Have fun! Play with Word 2007 styles to create text, color variation, stage placement, or texture and photographic elements.
-- Aaron
Our May 7th blog entry (Got the presentation blahs? Use Office images to add some spice to your PowerPoint presentations) describes how to add background images from the Office Online Clip Art collections.
Combine this with the June 1, 2009 entry announcing the Office Online Create a Spark PowerPoint contest (deadline June 26, 2009 11:59 PST), and here’s your chance to use those resulting presentations to inspire and motivate a community.
Here are just a few additional image ideas from the Microsoft’s Office Online Clip Art library using key words searches :
To find more great ways to make a great impression and explore the possibilities of PowerPoint, see the Office Online Help and How-to section.
--Aaron
Have you created a wonderful PowerPoint presentation that others find motivational or inspiring? Now's your opportunity to share it with others. Submit your entries to the Office Online "Create a Spark PowerPoint contest." Winners will be promoted online the week of July 6th.
Just think how inspiring it would be to see your work promoted on our site.
--Nancy
If your standard PowerPoint background has you (and your audience) yawning, consider adding a little pizzazz with background images from the Office Online Clip Art & Media collection.
For an immediate visual upgrade, add a background image
1. First, check out these background images on Office Online and download one you like – we have lots of new illustrations in styles ranging from funky and modern to slick and professional.
2. Then, add the picture as a background:
- In PowerPoint, click the slide that you want to add a background picture to.
To select multiple slides, click a slide, and then press and hold CTRL while you click the other slides.
- On the Design tab, in the Background group, click Background Styles, and then click Format Background.
- Click Fill, and then click Picture or texture fill.
- Do one of the following:
- To insert a picture from a file, click File, and then locate and double-click the picture that you want to insert.
- To paste a picture that you copied, click Clipboard.
- To use clip art as a background picture, click Clip Art, and then scroll to find the image you downloaded or in the Search text box, type a word or phrase that describes the clip that you want, or type all or part of the file name of the clip.
- Do one of the following:
- To use the picture as a background for the slides that you selected, click Close.
- To use the picture as a background for all of the slides in your presentation, click Apply to All.
Notes
- To adjust a picture's relative lightness (brightness) or the difference between its darkest and lightest areas (contrast), in the Format Background dialog box, click the Picture pane, and then choose the options that you want.
- To have text appear on top of the picture, add a text box. On the Insert tab in the Text group, click Text Box, and then drag to make it the size that you want. Enter your text in text box.
Let me know if you have any trouble with these steps – if you do others might as well and I can update them super quick with your suggestions.
--Sheila
Everybody around here has been busy working on new partnerships so that you will have access to more images, and this blog has been a little neglected as a result. I thought I’d just write this post to see if I can get some quick feedback from you. Please respond in the comments section below to any or all of these questions:
- What types of posts do you find most useful here?
- Do you need to know how-to work with images in your documents?
- Do you need to know specifics for specific programs (for example, Word vs. PowerPoint)
- Are you interested in learning about new content available to you?
- How do you use our images and what’s your biggest stumbling block when you do use them?
- Do you use our images for your work documents or personal, or both?
- What types of images do you use most?
- What do you want to see more of?
- Got any specific suggestions for how you’d most like to see us use this blog?
- What other blogs do you read?
- Any other comments?
Thanks for providing feedback.
--Nancy
We introduce our newest partner NVTOfficeClips available on the Microsoft Office Online Clip Art & Media website.
This selection is full of tessellated backgrounds, ferocious wildlife, auspicious icons, extreme sports, and enough screen-candy to blast your projects into a new world of ultra-cool exotica. And this is just the start of what NVTOfficeClips has to offer. Select the image below to see a selection of free NVTOfficeClips available on our website.
And don't forget about this new icon 
which represents higher resolution and more variety of available images. Clicking the icon takes you to NVTOfficeClips, where you can choose a higher resolution suiting your project's needs, and browse for other images if you feel like it. (Read more about this in our Higher Resolution / More Variety blog entry).
To see more free photography, illustration, sounds, and animations, for work and for play, select here to view our gallery of Clip Art & Media partners.
Higher Resolution and More Variety of Clip Art
A new icon has appeared on some of the Clip Art and Media site images representing higher resolution and more variety of available images.
Images displaying this icon are available for purchase at a higher resolution from a partner site. Clicking the icon takes you to the partner site, where you can choose a higher resolution suiting your project's needs, and browse for other images if you feel like it.
If you don't need a high resolution image for your project, you can still download the basic resolution version for free from the Clip Art and Media site; all you have to do is click the selection basket checkbox:
Why would I want to buy a high resolution image?
Look at the dimensions on the image you selected; will it fit in your project? Will you need to make the image bigger?
If the answer is yes, you might want to consider a higher resolution: the more you stretch a raster file (i.e. a jpg or png), the more image quality will be degraded; the image will become blurry, pixilated, and will not print out nicely:
We've created a new space for people to share opinions and inspiration. Check out the Clip Art and Media facebook page --- a place to talk about the work you love, to show off the work you do with Clip Art and Media, and to become part of new directions in the Microsoft Clip Art Media collection.
We hope this to be user-driven site, organic and ever-changing, and hope you will take this opportunity to create and add content. If you’re a user of facebook – please “Become a Fan” of the Clip Art and Media page and help spread the word!
If you are looking for fresh, holiday photos, check out one of our new partners: Fotolia.com. They have recently provided nearly 100 new, amazing Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's and Valentine’s Day images - perfect for all of your holiday celebrations.
Simply type in “Fotolia” in the search box or click here for free images from Fotolia. Of course, more variety and larger, high resolution images are available directly from our partners.
Click here to visit Fotolia.com.
Working with a wonderful designer, Ally Hood, and collaborating together, we brought some fabulous new imagery to CAM - from her work with Templates. We know that you love backgrounds, borders and other design elements, so I am happy to have recently published a whole new batch of them! Check them out and let us know what you think!
I asked Ally to write something about how she came up with the designs and also how to implement them using Office programs. So, in her own words....
I have been creating templates for Office Online for several years and I am always exploring new ways to really push the limits of what Office applications can do. With the release of Office 2007, came great new features. This inspired me to create more complex art and really take advantage of the cool new features!
I created backgrounds and other coordinating clip art to be used (and reused) specifically in templates, for different Office applications; primarily Word, PowerPoint and Publisher. I ended up creating a lot of art and it’s used in a lot of templates on the site. However, rather than keep it hidden in templates, the Office Online Clip Art and Media site manager, Natalie, and I, teamed up to publish the art and provide it to our customers, as free downloads from CAM.
The great thing about these backgrounds is that you can insert them into your favorite application, crop them, re-color them, layer them, rotate them and make a really great document, with your own personal spin on it.
One of my most recent templates is the Fourth of July photo album. By using four of the new backgrounds, I was able to create a fun template to compile family photos in.
You can use these same backgrounds or even use different backgrounds and make Fourth of July greeting cards or party invitations:
This same layout, with different, theme-ready, backgrounds can make anything from a baby photo album to graduation photo album.
These backgrounds can be used for so much more than just photo albums. If you want to see more of what you can do with these backgrounds; including invitations, stationary, name cards and more, check out the Templates site!
I hope you enjoy working with this art, as much as I did creating it. If you end up creating some really great documents, and want to share them with the world, publish those documents, as community templates, on the Templates site!
We know we can always do a better job and really value your feedback and suggestions; every day, decisions we make are guided by what you tell us: the images we select for our collection, the topics we write about in this blog, the features we implement on our site...
Yes, we love to hear from you and want to hear from you even more! So we want to learn how you would like to engage with us and with other users on the site, and how you like to interact on your favorite sites today.
- What compels you to post a comment, rate an item or forward a page to a friend?
- How do you like engaging with the site, other users of the site, and experts?
- What brings out the "chatty" you? For example, do you read reviews by other users before you purchase something on Amazon or book a hotel on Expedia? Later on, do you go back and add your review to help others with their decisions?
- Do you comment on images on sites like Flickr or iStockphoto? Do you read other users' comments?
- What about sites, such as Wikipedia, that allow you to add and edit? If you could edit a Web page or share a how-to video on a site, would you?
I just came across these very cool anime-style illustrations and animations that a Korean high school student named Han Byul Jang created entirely in PowerPoint.
According to http://pptheaven.mvps.org/zzangdol.html, "Han Byul Jang is a rising star, PowerPoint artist and animator in Korea's PowerPoint Expert Club (An online PowerPoint Community). Also known as Zzangdol in the community, he can draw realistic anime characters (completely using PowerPoint's Freeform tool) and animate them all in PowerPoint." The image below is an example of his work; there are many more on http://pptheaven.mvps.org/zzangdol.html, including downloadable animations.
So, I'm curious - have you ever used PowerPoint to create animations? Or for that matter, have you used any Office applications to create illustrations, comics etc?
If so, tell us all about it and show it off ! Just leave a comment to this post with a URL to your masterpiece :-)
A few people have asked about this lately, so here are a few easy steps to use images from http://office.microsoft.com/clipart as wallpaper or screen savers.
If you're using Windows:
- For wallpaper:
- Go to http://office.microsoft.com/clipart and download the image(s) you'd like to use.
- Navigate to the images (they should be in My Pictures folder, in a subfolder called Microsoft Clip Organizer)
- Right-click the image you want to use and select Set as desktop background
- If you want to change the way the picture is displayed on your desktop, right-click the desktop, and then click Properties
- On the Desktop tab, in the Position box, select a display option.
- For screen saver:
- Go to http://office.microsoft.com/clipart and download the image(s) you'd like to use.
- click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Display.
- On the Screen Saver tab, under Screen saver, click My Pictures Slideshow in the list.
- Click Settings to specify the folder containing your pictures,
- Navigate to the images (they should be in My Pictures folder, in a subfolder called Microsoft Clip Organizer)
If you're using a Mac:
- For wallpaper:
- Go to http://office.microsoft.com/clipart and download the image(s) you'd like to use.
- In the Apple menu, go to Preferences
- Click the Desktop & Screen Saver icon
- Click the Desktop tab
- Navigate to the image you'd like to use (should be under Applications > Microsoft Office > clipart) and select it
- For screen saver:
- Go to http://office.microsoft.com/clipart and download the image(s) you'd like to use.
- In the Apple menu, go to Preferences
- Click the Desktop & Screen Saver icon
- Click the Screen Saver tab
- Navigate to the image you'd like to use (should be under Applications > Microsoft Office > clipart) and select it
Tip: Images in wmf format work best, because they stretch and resize without quality loss; jpgs can work too, it depends on your screen resolution.
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La semaine dernière, nous avons lancé sur nos sites francophones une collection de photos et illustrations fournies par notre partenaire, iStockphoto.
Vous pouvez maintenant trouver ces images sur :
Ces images peuvent être téléchargées gratuitement sur Office Online par les utilisateurs d’Office. Ceux qui le souhaitent ont aussi la possibilité d’acheter une version haute résolution de ces images sur le site d’iStockphoto. C’est facile :
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pour télécharger la version gratuite, cliquez « Ajouter au panier »
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pour visionner et éventuellement acheter la version haute résolution, ou simplement flâner sur le site d’iStockphoto, cliquez « Pour acheter une version haute résolution… »
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Chinese New Year, also known as Lunar New Year, is fast approaching; if you're looking to create your own greeting cards for Chinese New Year, we have plenty of choices for you: clipart/illustrations, photos... And since we'll be ushering in the Year of the Rat, here are a few of our Chinese Zodiac rat designs:
If you want to see more:
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