Add Picture Fills to Shapes in PowerPoint 2003 and 2002 for Windows

In previous tutorials, we have covered solid, gradient, texture and pattern fills for AutoShapes in PowerPoint 2003 or earlier versions. In this tutorial, we finish this series by showing you how you can use Picture Fills. If you need pictures to use as fills for this tutorial, you can get free pictures from the listing on our Free Images page, or you can buy high quality pictures from our Indezine Photos section.

Scroll down this page to see a sample presentation that contains AutoShapes with Picture Fills.

Follow these steps to change or apply a Picture Fill to an AutoShape:

1. Select the AutoShape that you want to change the fill for. Alternatively, if you just want to follow this tutorial step-by-step, launch PowerPoint. Most of the time, PowerPoint will open with a new slide in a presentation, users can change the slide layout to Blank by selecting Format | Slide Layout, and then choose the Blank layout in the resultant Task Pane.
2. You will find the rectangle AutoShape option in the Drawing toolbar located below the PowerPoint interface. Select this option, and click once on the blank slide to place a rectangle AutoShape.
3. Select the AutoShape, and choose Format | AutoShape, as shown in Figure 1. Or double click the AutoShape.
4. 
   Figure 1: AutoShape
4. Either way, this opens the Format AutoShape dialog box that you can see in Figure 2. Note that this is a multi-tabbed dialog box, and all the options we need can be found in the Colors and Lines tab (again, see Figure 2).
5. 
   Figure 2: Format AutoShape dialog box
5. In the Fill area, click the downward arrow next to the Color option, and choose Fill Effects, as shown in Figure 3.
6. 
   Figure 3: Fill Effects
6. This summons the Fill Effects dialog box that you can see in Figure 4. This dialog box has four tabs: Gradient, Texture, Pattern and Picture, select the Picture tab (again, refer to Figure 4).
7. 
   Figure 4: Picture tab of the Fill Effects dialog box
7. Click the Select Picture button (refer to Figure 4 above).
8. This opens Select Picture dialog box as shown in Figure 5. Navigate to where you have saved pictures to be used as fills, select a picture, and click the Insert button.
9. 
   Figure 5: Select picture dialog box
9. This will take you back to the Fill Effects dialog box. In the Fill Effects dialog box, there are two options that you should be aware of:
10. The Lock Picture Aspect Ratio check-box, when selected locks the height to width aspect ratio of your picture so that their proportion doesn't change when used as a fill.
11. The Rotate Fill Effect with Shape check-box, when selected makes sure that the picture used as a fill rotates when the container AutoShape is rotated.
10. Click OK to apply the picture to the AutoShape, and get back to the Format AutoShape dialog box. Thereafter, click OK again to get back to your slide and AutoShape.
11. Remember to save your presentation often.
Related Link: Learn how to do more with AutoShapes in this free excerpt from my book: Cutting Edge PowerPoint For Dummies, read a free chapter called AutoShape Magic here.