today i want to show you how you can create a stunning parallax effect in your next microsoft
powerpoint presentation and this is a show stopper if you use this i can guarantee you'll have at
least one person come up to you in your next presentation to ask you how you created this
it turns out it's pretty easy to pull off so let's check it out here i am in powerpoint and i have
three images on the slide that i'm going to use as part of this parallax effect if you want to follow
along today i've included a link to this deck right up here if you'd rather try your own images
and you're a microsoft 365 subscriber if you go up to insert on the top ribbon and then click
on images and stock images you'll find a massive collection of different images that you can use
as your background now let's say you're not a microsoft 365 subscriber you're not out of luck
there's a fantastic website called pixels.com you can click on it right up here and they offer
tons and tons of free stock photos and also videos i use it all the time
in my different creations to help me with the parallax effect i want to turn on guides this
will help me know where the edges of the slide are and in a moment you'll see why this is important
to turn on guides let's go up to the top tabs and click on the one titled view within the
show category right in about the middle you'll see a few different options let's check the
box that says guides here you'll see a vertical line and a horizontal line appear on your slide
let's take the vertical line and position that over on the leftmost side of the slide
i also want to add another guide to the right hand side of the slide so all right click on
the vertical guideline and then i'll click on add another vertical guide and then i'll take this one
and i'll position it over on the right hand side i'm going to do the same with the horizontal guide
i'll take it and position it at the top of the slide then i'll right click on it add another
horizontal guide and then i'll position that at the bottom of the slide next i want to make sure
that all of my images are on the appropriate layer so i want to have the background image be the back
most layer then i want the logo to be the middle layer and i want myself to be on the topmost layer
by far the easiest way to check this is to simply click on one of your images i'll click on the
background then go up to the top ribbon and click on picture format all the way over on the right
hand side click on selection pane this will open up the selection pane over on the right hand side
whatever item appears at the top of the list is the topmost layer and whatever appears at
the bottom of the list is the bottom most layer so here i can see that kevin is currently the topmost
layer and the background's at the very bottom and then my logos right in the middle so this is all
exactly where i want it to be but i wanted to call this out because this is by far the easiest way to
adjust the different layers of elements on your slide next i want to remove the background from
the photo of myself and i can use powerpoint to do this here i'll click on my photo up on the top
ribbon i'll go up to picture format and all the way over on the left hand side there's the option
to remove background when i click on that i'll see a whole bunch of magenta appear in the photo
powerpoint will remove the area in magenta and it'll keep the areas that are colored now
powerpoint does a decent job but it didn't correctly identify everything i can go back
and fine-tune what areas powerpoint keeps up in the top left-hand corner i can mark areas
to keep so here i'll go through and highlight a few of the areas that should be included
i could also go to the top and i can mark areas to remove now especially with more complex photos
it might take a little bit of back and forth and highlighting but once you're satisfied
with the result simply go up to the top left hand corner and then click on keep changes with
that all now out of the way we're ready to start positioning our different images on the slide and
this is going to be the starting position for the parallax effect first i'll take the background and
i'm going to expand it so it's far larger than the slide and i'll position it right at about here
this is where the guides are extremely helpful because we can very easily visually tell where the
actual visible area of the slide is next i'll take the logo and i want wanted to start off the slide
so i'm going to drag it over onto the left hand side so it's just off the slide also
i want myself to appear in the center of the slide so i'll put myself right here we're now
ready to apply the parallax effect and i'll show you two different ways that you can apply
it first we'll use animations and this should work with just about any version of powerpoint
and then i'll show you how you can also apply it using morph this is probably a little bit
easier but it's only available in more recent versions of powerpoint to apply the parallax
effect using animations we'll start from the back most layer and then we'll work our way up with the
background i wanted to move over the slide just like that and we can use an animation for that
here i'll select the background and let's go up to the top tab titled animations within animations
over on the right hand side let's click on this add animation drop down and if we scroll down
here's the option for a motion path line i'll select this one by default the animation has
it moved downwards but i want it to move over to the right so here with this object selected i'll
click on effect options and then i'll click on write i've now applied the animation and in the
top left hand corner i can click on preview to look at what the animation looks like and that
looks pretty good if i want to adjust the start point and the end point over here i can click on
this number one and when i click on that here i see a green circle that indicates the start point
and here i see a red circle that indicates the end point now i can drag this red circle over
to the right or i can drag it over to the left if i want it to be shorter or longer if i want
to keep this so it's a perfectly straight line i can press the shift key and then drag it over and
that will ensure that it stays a perfect line now i'm pretty happy with the initial movement so i'll
leave it right at about there next i want to apply a similar animation to the logo here i'll select
the logo i'll go up to add animation and once again i'll scroll down and select the motion path
line animation just like with the background by default it moves down and i want this to move
right so here i'll go up to effect options and i'll select over to the right you'll see that
the animation stops at about right at this point so i want to adjust the end point just like we
did before i can click on the number i'll click on the number two and here i see the end point is not
even quite on the slide so here i'll select the dot also press the shift key and then i'll pull
the logo all the way over to the right hand side of the slide so the end point will be right at
about here next i can preview what the animation looks like so far here i'll click on preview
and there i see the background moves first followed by the logo in a moment
we'll change the order of the animations but so far i'm happy with the positioning
next i want to add some animation to myself here i'll select my image
i'll go to add animation and once again let's scroll down and then select the line motion path
once again by default it moves to the bottom let's go up to
effect options and this time let's select over to the left
it looks like my image moves over to the left hand side and i'm happy with the distance that it moves
so that looks good right now now that i've applied all of the different animations let's look at how
it's coming together here i'll click on preview in the top left hand corner i can see the background
move i see the logo move and i can also see myself move now they all move somewhat fast so
here i'll select all the different items and for the duration i'm going to set it to 6 seconds this
now applies the duration to all of these different images also i want all the different images to
animate at the same time also within animations on the ribbon over on the right hand side let's
open up the animation pane and here i can see that they're currently running sequentially so i click
and the first animation runs then i click again and the next one runs but i i want all of them
to run at the same time here i'll right click on the logo and i'll click on start with previous and
i'll do the same with my photo so now they'll all start to play at the same time so now when i click
on preview now we can see the background me and the logo all move at the same time and that's my
parallax effect it looks pretty good next i want to show you how you could create the same effect
using the morph transition once again i think this approach is a little bit easier but it does
also require a more recent version of powerpoint over on the left hand side let's copy this slide
so we can also use this as a start point i'll press ctrl d and that'll create a duplicate
on slide number two over in the animation pane i'll delete all of the different animations
now that we've deleted all of the animations let's go over to the left hand side again where
we can see all of the slides here i'll press ctrl d and once again i'll create a duplicate
for the morph transition this first slide here will be the beginning slide or basically the
first step of our animation and then the second slide will be the end point of the animation so
where all of the images will finish up so here once again i want the cookie logo to end up
right at about here on the slide i also want to move myself over to this point and then we'll
take the background image and i'll move it down just a little bit so the background will move
i've now positioned everything where i want it to apply the morph transition i'll go up to the
top tabs and click on transitions and here i see the option for morph i'll click on morph
and overall it looks pretty good it is moving a little bit fast so over here i can also adjust the
duration i'll set it to six seconds just like i did with the animation then i'll hit enter
and over on the left hand side i can click on preview to see what this looks like
and check that out so using the morph transition we can create something that looks very similar to
what we created with animations and personally i think using morph is a little bit easier
but it's really your preference you could use either approach alright well that's how easy it is
to create the parallax effect and you'll probably want to reserve this for those special reveal
moments in your presentation it also works best when you have many different layers so have fun
experimenting with it to see what you can create to see more powerpoint tutorials like this one
check out the playlist right up above. Please consider subscribing and I'll see you next time.