Quicker way for sending images to slide background?

Sep 08, 2021

Hello!  I have a very minor inefficiency I'm hoping this community can help with.  In my projects, I send a lot of images (screenshots) to the background of slides - anywhere from 20 to 100 per project.  The quickest way I've found to do this is to take the screenshot then right-click on the slide background, select Format Background, and select Clipboard.  It only takes a few seconds, but I'd love if there was a way to create a keyboard shortcut or quick access link to send an image to the background (there doesn't appear to be either).  Has anyone had any luck with this?  Thanks!

3 Replies
Mark Shepherd

Hi Alex:

There are a number of ways you can approach this requirement, however, I would suggest using one of the following approaches:

1. Create a number of layers to serve as the "pseudo-background" for when you click on an image or a slide object on the Base Layer.

2. Use a trigger to show/display the desired layer for the image(s) in question.

As to how you transition from a regular image to a background, you can change the size and/or coordinates of the image (I'd suggest making it full-screen size, at coordinates 0,0), plus considering the use of fade-out effects in Photoshop to make things look like they are somewhat deprecated relative to other primary image(s) or object(s) you may wish to focus on.

1a. Instead of layers, you could also potentially connect the triggers to different states for each image, so that when they are clicked, they transition to their new appearance.

Hope this helps!

Sincerely,

-Mark

Mark Shepherd, eLearning Developer | mshepherd@cihi.ca
C
anadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI)
Education & Conferences Department
Ottawa, Canada

PS: Sorry if this isn't as quick as you might like, but you can always use the keyboard shortcuts of CTRL+C and CTRL+V, plus also the CTRL+ENTER and CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER shortcuts to make the process of building these elements easier.