How to Crop Pictures in PowerPoint

Although known for presentations, PowerPoint is also a fair image editor. One of the many abilities within PowerPoint is cropping pictures to specific shapes. This trick is how designers make images in the shape of a circle, triangle, or other unique shapes rather than the default square or rectangle. See below for our tutorial on how to crop pictures in PowerPoint.

How to crop a picture in PowerPoint Tutorials Begin.

Begin by inserting a picture into your presentation. If you aren’t sure how to do this, check out our simple tutorial on How to Insert a picture into PowerPoint.

Once your picture is inserted into PowerPoint, click on the picture, and you’ll see a “Picture Format” button appear at the top of your screen. Click on this ribbon and then look for “Crop” at the right section of the ribbon.

Once you’ve clicked Crop, you’ll see a dropdown that allows you to choose “Crop to Shape”. Place your mouse over this option and see the long list of shapes you can choose from!

Don’t worry, we’ll break down the basic shapes you can use most easily.

You can crop a picture to any shape available in PowerPoint’s list of shapes

When you apply a crop to an image, by default it will scale to fit the existing image as closely as possible. In the example below, we are using a Block arrow with a few vertical lines behind it.

Next, we will change the crop by clicking the image and then clicking the “Crop” button again. This is where the customization comes in! You can now modify the shape (arrow) however you like in terms of size, and align the image inside of it to match the look you’re trying to achieve.

Notice the crop lines in this image

Adjust the shape crop and the image to match the look you’re trying to achieve

Once the crop is applied, you will see the new image displayed with the standard “image modifiers” (yellow circles) which you can now modify the same way as you would any shape.

Now that you know how to crop pictures in PowerPoint, it’s time to get familiar with this technique and get ready for our next tutorial, which will teach you how to apply 3D effects to images using PowerPoint.

Be sure to check out our premade custom PowerPoint templates which feature cropped pictures and stunning displays. Simply replace the image with your own and the shape will remain the same, easy as pie!