Using Background with Paperless Hymnal Slides

We want to state from the start of this conversation that this may be opening a can of worms. In the past, when people asked us if they can use a background behind our slides, we usually stated "Yes, if you know how to use Photoshop." And in fact several churches are doing just that, spending about 1/2 hour per slide to make slides transparent so a background can be used. I have found out since that it can be done easily, entirely in PowerPoint®. That said, and we will show you how to do it, we will not be supplying the files this way or supporting any efforts you put into changing your files. We will continue supplying our files exactly as we have done in the past. All that we have to say about doing this will be in this article and we will provide no further help in this regard. It is not our intention to teach you how to use PowerPoint. To add a background to a slide (it must be done a slide at a time): 1. Open a song file and save it using "save as" with a different name. This will prevent you from messing up your good file. 2. Make sure you are in the "Normal Mode" (selected in the lower left hand corner of the PowerPoint window). 3. Make sure you have the "Picture Tool Bar" available by: a. Clicking on View b. Clicking on Toolbars c. Clicking on Picture if it is not activated 4. Go to a slide on which you wish to use a background. 5. Click on the slide away from any text. Handles (small white boxes) should appear on each corner and side of the slide. 6. Click on the Set Transparent Color tool in the Picture Tool Bar. 7. Click on a white portion of the slide to select the color to make transparent. If you are working on the first slide of a stanza or the first slide of the chorus, there is most likely text showing up that you must delete. To delete: a. RIGHT Click on the slide to activate the graphic, making the handles show up at the corners and sides of the slide. b. From the menu that just appeared, select Order and Send to back. c. LEFT Click on the text block of the text you wish to delete. d. Left Click on the text block edge to change the edge from slanted lines to dots. e. Press your delete key. That test block should be gone. 8. You must now supply a background for your slide. Just insert the background picture or create background colors in PowerPoint and you are ready to go. 9. To help you visualize what these slides can look like, down load this file for the next several examples. a. Slide 1 - this background was made in PowerPoint by using the background tool b. Slide 2 - this background was made by making the music print transparent and allowing the background to show through c. Slide 3 - the music print was turned white by using the Format Picture tool and setting the brightness to 100% d. Slide 4 - this background picture has both dark and bright portions, hiding some of the music e. Slide 5 - this is the same as slide 4 but the Format Picture tool was used on the background for a brightness of 80% and a contrast of 20% f. Slide 6 - this shows an inappropiate use of a pretty picture Without going to a background, you can make your slides darker, if the white is too bright. Just use the Format Picture tool to set the contrast of the slide from the default 50% to something like 40%. Please keep a few things in mind if you decide to use backgrounds: You should have a reason for using a background other than "to make it pretty". Almost anything you do to a slide will make it harder to view for those who read music. Don't forget the reason slides are up there in the first place. No background is better than a bad background, whether it is the picture quality or the subject. The background should cause the viewer to think harder on the subject of the slide, not distract from it. Backgrounds should not be "busy", which will cause BBADD, busy background attention deficit disorder.