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What is Clip Art ?

Clipart is ready made art that you can use in your presentations (and other documents).

Instead of having to create your own graphics you can just use these instead.

PowerPoint comes with a large collection of royalty free clip art covering a huge range of topics.

Clip art should be used to add a lighted feel to your presentation (or document).

You should not use Clip Art if you are trying to get a serious message across.

Vector Graphics

There are actually two different types of graphics that you can have on your computer: Vector graphics and Raster graphics.

All clip art is of the vector type meaning they can be resized without losing any quality.

Another advantage of vector graphics is that the file size is usually very small.

Clip art is typically in the format of windows metafiles (.wmf) or enhanced windows metafiles (.emf).

What is the Clip Organiser ?

The Clip Organiser is an additional program that helps you to manage clip art (and other multi-media) files on your PC.

In PowerPoint 2000 this was called the Clip Gallery but in PowerPoint 2002 was changed to the Clip Organiser.

Inserting Clip Art

You can insert clip art in several different ways.

The most common methods are using a clip art placeholder or using the clip art task pane.

You can change the size, location and appearance of the clipart once it is on the slide.

If you cannot find the right piece of clip art using the Microsoft Office provided clip art there are several other places you can obtain clip art.

Many third party applications and web sites offer good clip art.

Things to Remember

You cannot flip or rotate clipart that has been inserted from files. Although you can ungroup the object and regroup the shape to convert it into a PowerPoint shape.

Clipart and most pictures that are available from the internet are copyrighted. Do not use any clipart or graphics that you do not have permission for.

It is possible to apply 3D effects to clip art objects. Ungroup the object first before apply 3D formatting.

In addition to picture and clipart you can also work with sound and video.

If you want to know more about the copyright around the Clip Art graphics please refer to the microsoft.com website.