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You can choose from a wide selection of slide design templates to create a background for your PowerPoint presentation. But sometimes you may want something more unique, which matches the content of the presentation more directly. In these cases, create your own background in PowerPoint. Follow these steps to add a photo or a clip art as a background in PowerPoint.

1. From the Ribbon, select the Design tab.
2. In the Background section, click on the Background button in the right corner. This will open the Format Background dialog box.
3. Select Picture or texture fill and from the Insert from section, click on File or Clip Art to choose the photo or clip art you want to use as a background. If the object is small, PowerPoint will stretch it to cover the whole slide. However, this can deform the graphic object.
4. If the graphic object is small, you can tile it. This means that the picture or clip art object will be placed repeatedly across the slide in rows. To do that, check the Tile picture as texture box.
5. If you don’t want to stretch or tile the picture or clip art, you can offset it from the edges of the slide. Simply, edit the text boxes for the percentage of Offset you want from each edge of the slide. As best practice – use the same number to offset for all four sides of the slides to keep the proportion ratio of the picture.
6. If you use a picture or clip art as a background it is the best practice to keep it faded or transparent. To make it transparent, in Transparency use the transparent slider or type in a transparency percentage.
7. Click on the Close or Apply to All buttons to apply a background to an individual slide or to all slides in the presentation. If you are not happy with changes you can always click on Reset Background button.