Do you need fills for shapes in PowerPoint that really contrasts well, especially when you have multiple shapes on a slide that need different types of fills? Yes, picture, gradient, or even solid fills work great, but what happens when you need to print that slide on a black and white printer? Or if your audience includes those who have problems distinguishing between different colors? In that case, your best option is to use pattern fills. We have already explored many of the fills available for shapes, and in this tutorial you'll learn how you can use pattern fills, but first, let us explore patterns a little.
- In grayscale or black and white views, or in presentations printed in black and white, colors within shapes can sometimes appear too dark or too light. Click the Macabacus Color Tools Fix Grayscale button to correct the grayscale appearance for all shapes in a presentation prior to printing in black and white.
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- Grayscale button for ppt for mac 2016 I would like to be able to view by presentation in B&W and grayscale (to preview and edit for printing on a B&W printer.) I found the topic and an add-in fix from Jim Gordon for ppt for mac 2011.
Patterns in PowerPoint are two-color designs comprising patterns that include lines, dots, dashes and checks. PowerPoint includes 48 such patterns with names like plaid, weaves, shingle, and zigzag. If you want to see a sample presentation showing pattern fills in PowerPoint, scroll down to the bottom of this page. Follow these steps to change or apply a pattern fill to a shape:
Open your PowerPoint presentation. Click File → Print. Printing options. In Settings you can select if you want to print your presentation in colour or black and white. Click the icon at the bottom of the window to the right to select among the options: To print in color: Settings → Color. To print in grayscale: Settings → Grayscale. You have to make sure that the second button, the Grayscale button is NOT on Automatic. It can be set to anything else just not automatic. Then you can use the first button to toggle back and forth between color and the grayscale option you selected.
- Select the shape that you want to change the fill for. Alternatively, if you just want to follow this tutorial step-by-step, launch PowerPoint. You will see the Presentation Gallery which allows you to set all attributes of your new presentation, such as a preset Theme or template. Make selections or just click Cancel in this gallery to open a blank presentation with a new slide, PowerPoint 2011 users can change the slide layout of this slide to Blank by selecting Layout | Blank within the Home tab of the Ribbon.
- Within the Home tab of the Ribbon, locate the Insert group and click the Shape button to access the Shape gallery with different types of shape options that you can see in Figure 1. Select any shape option to access the related submenu, select the shape you prefer (we selected the Teardrop shape, as you can see in Figure 1).
Figure 1: Shape gallery- Click and drag on the slide to insert the shape, or click once on the blank slide to place an instance of the shape. Select the shape so that the Ribbon area now shows the Format tab, as shown in Figure 2 (highlighted in red). Activate this Ribbon tab by clicking on it.
Figure 2: Format tab of the Ribbon- Within the Format tab, locate the Shape Styles group. Then click the downward arrow next to the Fill button to view the Fill drop-down gallery that you can see in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Fill gallery- In the Fill drop-down gallery, select the Fill Effects option which is the last option (refer to Figure 3 above). This opens the Format Shape dialog box. In this dialog box, make sure that the Fill panel is active, and select the Pattern tab that you can see in Figure 4 (highlighted in red). This will display a group of 48 pattern previews as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Pattern previews within Fill panel of the Format Shape dialog box- If you click on any pattern preview, you will be able to see it's name just above the pattern preview group (highlighted in red in Figure 5).
Figure 5:Selected Pattern name displayed- Click on the pattern of your choice, you will see a Live Preview of the pattern applied to the selected shape on the slide. Each pattern comprises two colors, the Foreground color (black by default) and the Background color (white by default). You can also change these colors, click the Foreground and Background color buttons shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Foreground and Background color buttons- When you click any of these buttons, a drop-down gallery of color options is displayed, as shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7: Color drop-down gallery- Let us explore the options within this galley one by one:
- Here you can select any of the colors in the active Theme of the presentation. You can also select any of the 5 tints or shades for any Theme color. Learn more about Themes here.
- Here you can choose from any of the ten standard colors, these ten standard colors are just choices of colors that PowerPoint believes to be widely used. You don't have to limit yourself to either the Theme colors or Standard colors, as we'll show you in the next options, although it's a good design idea to use Theme colors as far as possible.
- Here you can find the colors most recently used. If you have just launched PowerPoint and created a new presentation, the Recent Colors option may be entirely absent since you haven't selected any color recently!
- This option is to summon the Mac OS X Color picker as shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8: Mac OS X Color picker- In this Color picker, you can chose any color from the wheel. Thereafter adjust the selected color's luminosity within the long, thin slider on the right. Once you are happy with the color attained, you click OK to get back to your slide.
- Once you have selected the pattern fill type and changed the colors to suit your needs, click OK in the Format Shape dialog box to apply the changes to the selected shape and get back to the slide. Figure 9shows the selected shape applied with a pattern fill.
Figure 9: Shape with pattern fill- Remember to save your presentation often.
A. Theme Colors
B. Standard Colors
C. Recent Colors
D. More Colors
Sample Presentation of Pattern Fill in Shape:
Click below to view this presentation on SlideShare
Click below to view this presentation on YouTube
Acrobat Pro, Acrobat Pro Extended, and Acrobat 3D (version 8): You can print a color PDF in shades of gray (also known as grayscale or composite gray). For Windows versions, you can also choose to print all non-white colors as solid black rather than in shades of gray.
Reader and Acrobat Standard: Reader and Acrobat standard do not have a black and white print option. However, many color printers provide this option in the Properties dialog box (available through the Print dialog box).
Print color as shades of gray (Acrobat Pro, Pro Extended, and 3D Version 8)
Click the Advanced button at the bottom of the Print dialog box.
Print color as black (Acrobat Pro, Pro Extended, and 3D Version 8 only | Windows only)
On Windows, you can print all of the non-white colors in your PDF file as black, resulting in a simple monochrome printout. Printing as black is useful for printing PDFs that contain text only, or for printing engineering drawings that have lightly colored lines.
Select Print Color As Black. This prints colors as solid black, not in shades of gray.
Note: If the checkbox is dimmed, click the Advanced button. Make sure that Acrobat Default is selected in the Settings menu of the Advanced Print Setup dialog box.