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Change the background of imported of picture in Visio (Visio guy)

Anonymous
2020-06-10T20:25:45+00:00

Hello all,

I had this problem several times when I import an image (it's a vector) from somewhere and I want to change the background of the only imported picture, not the main background (I know that and found many tutorials for that), but I couldn't find any option for that in Visio, can you help me out in that case,

Another similar question if I import an image and try to use one of the parts of the image by dragging it out, is there any for that?  I know crop do that but sometimes you can't crop-specific things in figure but you can drag it easily.

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John Marshall Visio MVP 4,686 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2020-06-29T10:50:49+00:00

Sorry it was in the June 13th post....

"most graphic editors should be able to select the white background and remove it".

It could have been more verbose.

Open the image in a graphic editor.

Crop to the area you want.

Most graphic editors have a magic wand that will select colour areas that have a sensitivity adjustment to differentiate between shades of blue. You were lucky that your image had high contrast between colours so selecting the regions was easy. Once selected the region was deleted.

Repeat for all the other shapes you want to extract.

So you end up with a collection of images with transparent backgrounds.

Open the file folder with these images and just drag and drop them on an open Visio drawing.

Then drags these images from the Visio drawing to the Visio document stencil and you will have Visio masters you can use in other Visio drawings. Next step is just renaming them to something more useful that masterxx..

John... Visio MVP

I am looking forward to your other question.

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John Marshall Visio MVP 4,686 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2020-06-25T13:16:27+00:00

If you want to isolate the magnifying glass or the book, that is not hard to do. It is the same technique. You can also remove them from the picture, but the image would require some patching to add what those objects were hiding. The images are high contrast so getting clean separating is easy, it is just not easy to restore what the objects were hiding.

Visio is designed for putting objects together rather than taking them apart. So, Visio needs help from other apps to do this.

For the sake of people following your questions, you should mark this thread as answered and ask a new question if your follow on question is not directly related.

It makes the bean counters happy.

Interesting, I noticed a mistake in the artwork you just posted. The bookmark is rectangular, but its shadow is forked. I will keep the collection on my website up for a little longer. I have updated the collection with what I have extracted from that shape.

John... Visio MVP

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  1. John Marshall Visio MVP 4,686 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2020-06-13T16:47:28+00:00

    What kind of an image is it? If it is SVG, you can ungroup and treat each component as a Visio shape and change the fill colour. For most imported shapes, there is little that can be done to the background. You may need a graphics editor to change the background.

    John... Visio MVP

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  2. John Marshall Visio MVP 4,686 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2020-06-13T19:10:02+00:00

    jpg and png are not vector format, they are raster scan, so the objects may appear that the pieces can be moved. The image you supplied does have a high contrast transition so, most graphic editors should be able to select the white background and remove it.

    I will take a look at it when I get home. I should be able to hack it apart into 16 Visio shapes.

    Curiosity question. Why did you reference Visio Guy?

    John... Visio MVP

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-06-13T18:32:20+00:00

    I'm really that someone replied to my comment.  Few things for the clarification.

    I import jpg or png figures but they are in vectors meaning the adobe photoshop can easily do (as my friend says) what I want but in Visio I couldn't any option.  the things you talked about ungroup and others can you put steps for that I didn't understand because its not way to do. For the sake of simplicity, I will attach an image and can you change its background or drag the required image from a bigger image. 

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