When creating a custom PowerPoint template the first step is developing the custom artwork for backgrounds. I am going to break down a template recently designed. In PhotoShop I pull in all of the visual assets and stylize an appropriate to the theme canvas for the PowerPoint slides. Here is the content slide design for the “Blue Lens” template.

There are a lot of layers to create the desired effect. Here is the PhotoShop layers for this template (shows both the Content and Title slide background layers). Fortunately this was a fairly light template in terms of layered elements so we can show them all in one easy screenshot.


This is a pet peeve, but I really hate receiving Photoshop files with none of layers named – it’s is a huge waste of my time to go hunting for a needed layer by turning on and off layers. So, as seen, I always label all layers in PhotoShop so modifications are easy because the layers can be quickly identified.

I save out each of the backgrounds as a .jpg with a compression level of 10. From there it is all PowerPoint!

– Troy @ TLC