Drawing a CD or a DVD in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

Last week we received a graphic of a CD from Ellen Finkelstein -- who created it for a promotion -- the amazing part was that Ellen used PowerPoint to create the image of the CD -- of course although this looks like a CD, you can use it for a DVD or Blu-Ray disc as well! In this tutorial, you will learn how a slide program like PowerPoint can be used as a very capable drawing program. And creating a CD in PowerPoint 2010 is indeed cakewalk!

1. Add a new slide to an existing presentation, or create a new presentation. Make sure that it uses the Blank slide layout (see Changing Slide Layouts in PowerPoint 2010).
Tip: Why do we suggest you use the Blank slide layout? That's because we appreciate not having all the placeholders in my way when drawing something in PowerPoint -- of course you are not limited by my imagination -- yet a blank slide does look so similar to the canvas you see in a drawing program.
2. Click the Home or Insert tab of the Ribbon and, click the Shapes button. This opens the Shapes gallery that you can see in Figure 1 - in this gallery. Select the Donut shape (highlighted in red in Figure 1) from the Basics Shapes category.
3. 
   Figure 1: Donut shape selected within the Shapes gallery
3. Place the cursor on your slide and click once to insert a donut shape at the cursor position as shown in Figure 2.
4. 
   Figure 2: Donut shape inserted on slide
4. Now, resize the Donut so that it takes the size of a CD that you can see in Figure 3).
5. 
   Figure 3: Resized donut shape
5. Note that the donut shape has a yellow diamond lined to its inner perimeter -- select this yellow diamond and drag inside so that your donut shape looks more like a CD (see Figure 4). Learn to Manipulate the Shapes by Dragging Diamonds in PowerPoint 2010.
6. 
   Figure 4: Donut shape changed to CD shape
6. Now, remove the outline from the shape -- look at our No Shape Outline in PowerPoint 2010 tutorial to learn how to remove the outline.
7. To make the CD look real, you can add a picture fill to your shape. We choose a binary texture image that we sourced from Office Online -- you can see how the CD shape with the picture fill looks like in Figure 5.
8. 
   Figure 5: Picture fill for your CD shape
8. Your CD still looks flat though -- to add some dimension to it, you must add an effect. Make sure your CD graphic is selected. Then access the Drawing Tools Format tab of the Ribbon. Click the Shape Effects button to bring up a drop-down gallery that you see in Figure 6, below. Within this gallery, choose the Bevel option and select the Cross bevel style (highlighted in red in Figure 6).
9. 
   Figure 6: Aplying Shape Effects for your CD shape
Tip: Learn more about Bevel Effects in these tutorials:
Bevel Effects in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows
Bevel Effects in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows
Bevel Effects in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac
9. Figure 7 shows the finished CD -- if you need to send this picture to someone for non-PowerPoint use, you can right-click the CD and choose the Save as Picture option from the resultant menu (highlighted in red in Figure 7).
10. 
    Figure 7: Finished CD
10. Save to a graphic image format such as PNG, GIF, or JPG. Make sure you save your presentation too -- it's easy to do that by using the Ctrl + S shortcut key.