

In the Fill section, I reduced the transparency to 35%. I clicked one of the boxes, right-clicked and chose Format Shape. I like that, but I thought that the level of transparency was too high for good legibility. Some of the layouts put the text outside the image or on a solid shape, but this layout uses a semi-transparent text box.They use new shortcuts/techniques that you may not know. Here are 2 quick adjustments that I made. It’s quicker! If you aren’t using the text pane when you create SmartArt - any kind - you should try it out. You can click the small arrow on the left side of the SmartArt border to open the text pane and add the text there. If necessary, click the border of the SmartArt object and then resize and move it to fit on your slide.Instantly, you have a grid of images, all the same size! Choose one of the options that has large boxes, because these emphasize the images rather than text. You can hover over various options to see what they’ll look like. You’ll see the gallery of SmartArt Picture Layout options. Click the Picture Tools Format tab and then choose Picture Layout.The images appear on the slide, all selected. I started with 11 and then saw that they wouldn’t fit. Nine images worked well for me, but you can remove images easily. I was able to search for “hand” and get a number of images showing hands. Mine are in Flickr which is connected to PowerPoint, so that’s where I went. Choose Insert, Pictures if the photos are on your computer or Insert, Online Pictures if you have them in an online account.
