Making a Photo Album with PowerPoint 2010
Synopsis: In this article we look at how to create and edit a photo album using PowerPoint 2010.
Using a PowerPoint 2010 presentation is a great way to show some photos to your family and friends. You can use a template of your own or one of PowerPoint’s standard built-in templates. You can even download a template from another source, such as Office.com.
There is also a specific function within PowerPoint 2010 to create a photo album. Let’s see how to use that.
On the Insert tab, in the Images group, click Photo Album. You will see the Photo Album dialog.
You might have all of the photos you want to include in a single folder on your PC, but you can pick them from different places if you need to. To locate the first photo click File/Disk…. The Insert New Pictures dialog appears.
Browse to the folder containing the first image, select the image and click Insert.
The Photo Album dialog now shows this first image in the list in the center and the image is previewed on the right.
We’ll choose some more images in a moment. First let’s look at some of the options in this dialog.
Below the list of pictures is a Remove button that you can use to remove a picture from the list of pictures that will make up the album.
To the left of the Remove button is a pair of arrows that will be enabled as soon as you have 2 or more pictures in the list. These buttons let you change the order of the pictures in the list.
Below the preview are three pairs of buttons. The first pair can be used to rotate the image. The second and third pairs can be used to adjust the contrast and brightness of the image.
To the left of the picture list is the New Text Box button. You can click this and a text box will be inserted. You can use that to add a title or section title, for example. Here I’ve added one text box.
There are two check boxes under Picture Options:.
Check the first to insert captions under all pictures. These captions default to the picture file names but can be changed later.
Checking the second box means that all pictures will be shown in black and white.
Now choose a picture layout.
The drop down list contains several options. Select “4 pictures”.
The preview panel in the lower right shows what an album page will look like.
Now select a frame shape. Choose “Simple Frame, Black”.
Now click on Browse to the right of Theme: and choose a theme. Let’s go for “Aspect”.
Click Select.
Now add a few more pictures. This is how the dialog looked when I’d added a few more.
To create the photo album, click Create.
The photo album is created, with a default title. You can change this by clicking in the placeholder and editing.
The text box that appears after the first picture can also be edited in this way, enabling you to introduce a section of the album.
Notice how the pictures each have a caption.
You save the photo album in just the way you would save any other PowerPoint 2010 presentation.
However, if you open it again to make changes you will see that PowerPoint 2010 recognizes that it is a photo album. Select the Insert tab and click on the Photo Album button in the Images group. You will see that there is an option Edit Photo Album.
Click this and you will see the Photo Album dialog again. You can make changes to the layout, frame, list of pictures, and so on.
Simon Calder
Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!
