PowerPoint Morph Tutorial #3: Cut away

PowerPoint morph is a magic little transition that’s been around for a while now. As the world gradually discovers just how useful it really is, it’s turning out to be the gift that keeps giving. We’ve compiled a trilogy of how-to tricks so that you can up your morph ante.

Before we get going, if you take a look at this and you start breaking out in a morph sweat, then you might want to take a look at this article first: it explains the basics of morph and how it works.

But if all of that is child’s play to you, it’s time to continue the second most important trilogy in the known universe. (This one is the most important, in case you were wondering.)

PowerPoint Morph Tutorial #1: The morph magnifying glass

In this tutorial we use morph to create a magnified ‘roll-over’ effect on an image.

PowerPoint Morph Tutorial #2: Lens reveal

In this tutorial we create a lens, and then use morph to bring everything into sharp focus.

PowerPoint Morph Tutorial #3: The cut-away

In this tutorial find out how to use morph to create a cut-away effect that can be used in everything from blueprints and sketches, to interior and exterior photographs.

PowerPoint Morph Tutorial #3: Cut away

And for our third and final trick… a new take on the classic picture slideshow. This works best with a sequence  of images of the same subject – we’ve chosen architectural blueprints – to show their development into a real life construction:

Use Cases

This is a really slick way to show before and after examples. The possibilities in your corporate presentations are endless – why not try a before and after of the environmental impact on the polar ice caps, the proposed regeneration of an inner-city area, or indeed like the example we have here, from sketch, to blueprint, to the real thing!

Step-by-step tutorial

1. Go into “View” > “Slide Master” and create a new layout.

2. Delete all the text boxes so that you have a blank slide, then “Insert Placeholder” and insert a picture placeholder that fills the whole slide.

3. Copy and paste a tablet png (you can download icons for free from here [https://thenounproject.com/]) onto the slide, and then insert a second, smaller placeholder inside the screen. Delete the tablet image from the slide.

4. Exit the slide master (“Slide Master” > “Close Master View”), and change the layout of your slide to the custom layout you just created.

5. Insert the blueprint into the larger placeholder, and the designed image into the smaller one. Copy and paste the tablet onto the slide, adjusting its position to suit the smaller placeholder.

6. Move the tablet and small image just off the slide, and using the crop function (“Format” > “Crop”), enlarge the image and align with the blueprint on the slide. Be sure to use the white dots on each corner of the image to resize, not the black bars around the placeholder (these will alter the shape of your placeholder, rather than the image).

7. Duplicate your slide, and move the small placeholder over the section of the image that you would like to reveal. Use the crop function again to align the image to the slide (don’t alter the size of the image, just the position).

8. Add the morph transition onto your second slide.

9. Repeat steps 5-8 with each subsequent image in the sequence.

And there you have it, folks! Why settle for a simple slideshow when you can reveal a progression of photos with a nifty cutaway PowerPoint trick?

And if you’re ready for a different morph challenge, why not build and animate a 3D Death Star, or if you’ve got carried away and it’s all gone wrong, see our fix for morphing multiple objects here.