In Google Slides, when you place text over an image, it can be difficult to read the text. My solution to this is to fill the text box with white… however, that covers the image. Change the transparency slider on the text fill to create that perfect balance.
hard to read text
To make a presentation really eye-catching, you need to have a really great graphic. The challenge then comes when you put text over the graphic. It can be difficult to read.
Google Slides text boxes
For this tutorial I am using Google Slides. Text boxes are the regular text boxes that you add to Presentations. As you can see in the image above, this doesn’t always look good.
Paint can
After adding text to the slide, click the paint can icon on the toolbar. I usually choose a white color, but of course there are many good reasons to choose other colors.
custom colors
The plus icon under “CUSTOM” allows you to get out of the default “crayon box” colors provided. This is where you can customize the transparency.
solid covers image
Solid white text covers the image. Sometimes that’s fine, but usually I want my viewer to see the entire graph. Making the white background of the text box less opaque will allow you to have readable text AND see the graphic.
transparency slider
It’s not labeled, but below the rainbow color picker is the transparency slider. move it to the LEFT some. All the way to the left will make it completely clear. That will be too much. All the way to the right is completely opaque. Somewhere to the left of center is almost right.
Fit text box
If your text expands outside the bounds of the text box, you’ll want to adjust the size of the text box so that all of the text is captured against the semi-transparent white background.
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When you add text in Google Slides, does it sometimes get lost in the image behind it? Alice Keeler shows you how to adjust the text box to make it easier to read.
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