Labelling pictures with line and letter overlays

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I had sent my friend a picture of a particular piece of an installed equipment.  She sent it back wanting to know the dimensions of a particular part, a sub-assembly of the equipment.  I made the measurements and tried to put them on a copy of the picture that I had imported into PowerPoint.

I discovered that the measurement symbols (dimension lines) didn’t change, in size, with the picture as I needed to down-size the picture just a bit to provide a margin around it on the slide so I could annotate the picture – notes about the dimensions of the sub-assembly.  This meant I had to rework the lines showing the measurement locations every time I made any adjustments to the size of the picture.  I want to know if there is some way to “group” the measurements with the picture, so that if I change the size of the picture, the lines showing the measurements change accordingly.

I hope I have made myself clear, but let me know if there are any questions.  As usual, any insight that anyone would care to share will be greatly appreciated by not only me, but also my friend.  Thanks.

Ron M

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Try this:

Group objects

1. Press and hold Ctrl while you select each object.

2. Select Shape Format >Group > Group.

3. Format or move the grouped object however you want.

PowerPoint training > Pictures and graphics > Group or ungroup objects

Windows 11 Pro version 22H2 build 22621.1778 + Microsoft 365 + Edge

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I may have an alternative, though it might be a bit kludgy. I was remodeling a bathroom and needed to email an image of its layout — with its dimensions — to a contractor. I already had an image of its layout, so I just used MS Paint to ‘write’ the dimensions onto the image.

Since you need margins, copy/paste your picture onto a Word document and then take a screenshot that includes the needed margins for your annotations. Save the screenshot and then open it with MS Paint and use the Text function to add your notes.

Again, it’s kludgy and might be time-consuming, but it worked for me. Hopefully someone else here will have a more elegant option. Good luck!

Win 7 SP1 Home Premium 64-bit; Office 2010; Group B (SaS); Former 'Tech Weenie'

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This is the method I use:

Copy the picture directly into a new Word document.
Select Behind text for warping on the picture. Also select Fix position on page.
Shrink and move the picture to allow room for added text.
Type the measurements and notes (text) near the picture.
Select insert line with arrow or with brackets to connect the text to the item in the picture. You can change the thickness and color of the lines and add borders to the entire page.
Once you have it like you want Press WinKey + Shift + S to open the capture utility and box capture the picture and text and border. This capture is now an image that picture, text, lines, etc will increase and decrease in proportionally.

HTH, Dana:))

HTH, Dana:))

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SueW and Drcard:)), thank you very much for your responses. It would seem that both approaches would work.  I was hoping that I could get one that used PowerPoint, but I am quite happy to use Word.

Ron M

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SueW

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You can do it in PowerPoint before you try to change the size of the picture and experience the problem you have mentioned: When the resulting picture is not of the right size, put PowerPoint in “Slide Show” mode, so the picture appears in full screen, take a screenshot that then you can crop with some image editor to get rid of unseemly borders. Then paste the screenshot where you need it — if it is going to be placed in something like an Office document, changing the shape by pulling on the corresponding small handles in opposite corners to get it to be of the right size without distorting the picture.

I make all sort of pictures in this way using PowerPoint, such as presentations, birthday emails, personalized Christmas cards for the Holidays, etc.

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Ron M wrote:

I was hoping that I could get one that used PowerPoint

You’re welcome, Ron M. Did you take a look at b’s suggestion above mine? It uses PowerPoint, so it might be what you’re looking for.

Win 7 SP1 Home Premium 64-bit; Office 2010; Group B (SaS); Former 'Tech Weenie'

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In situations where you are pointing out a small portion of a photo for details, I use the inset blowup technique making the small portion of the photo much larger for viewing as in my example below. This is done by cropping the small portion and saving as a separate photo and use Word to create the inset blowup.

HTH, Dana:))

HTH, Dana:))

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