I think this will be a bit difficult to explain, but I'll try.
If you remove the texture fill, you're left with a gradient, as you're
aware. It's misleading, though, because the gradient settings don't exactly
show up in the color picker, so it's really hard to tell what's going on.
Right-click the shape and choose Format Picture. In the Fill tab, click
Gradient Fill. You'll see the violet gradient.
Now if you make sure Stop 1 is selected and in the Color dropdown, choose
Pink, Text 2. Then choose Stop 2 and in Color, choose Pink Text 2 again.
Then with Stop 2 still selected, choose More Colors in the color dropdown.
Then you can move the slider to make it a lighter variation of Pink Text 2.
(Or you can just choose one from the middle of Pink Text 2 column in the
color picker. Do the same for Stop 3.
(Here's more on gradients in 2007 if you need it.
http://www.echosvoice.com/gradients.htm )
Okay, so now you have a gradient that's based on the "Text 2" color of your
theme.
Now go to the Design tab or the Slide Master tab. Click Background Styles.
Mouse over the options there. Those are based on the colors for Background
1, Text 1, Background 2 and Text 2. The purpose here is that, the Background
and Text colors automatically contrast so your text never disappears on the
background. So if you change the slide background to "Text 1," then all the
stuff on the slide that used to be colored "Text 1" is now colored
"Background 1" instead. So it shows up against Text 1. Does that make sense?
You can see this in action by mousing over the different colors in the
Background Styles gallery. When you make the background a darker color
(black or dark pink), the shape changes color automatically to contrast
against it.
If you choose a different set of colors from the Color dropdown (on the same
Design or Slide Master tabs), you can see the entire gradient change color
to match the new color that's in the Text 2 position of that color scheme.
(And you of course get new Background Style colors, because the Background 1
/ Text 1 / Background 2 / Text 2 colors are different now.)
Here's more about color schemes. This is for PPT 2003, but the general
principle's still the same:
http://www.echosvoice.com/colorschemes.htm
So the upshot is, that shape is a gradient built on Theme Colors,
specifically the Background 1 / Text 1 / Background 2 / Text 2 colors.
Just for sake of completeness, I can't remember how to get both the gradient
and picture fill texture in the shape. I know the texture image needs to be
black and white, and I know you can set the texture for the slide background
so it shows up in the Background Styles gallery (there's no interface for
this, though, so you have to hand-edit the theme's XML to do this). But
these are shapes, not the slide background. This also may have been done by
hand-editing the XML in the theme, though, so it has both the texture fill
(which is a picture) and the gradient fill (which is a drawing tool -- this
is why you see both the Picture Tools and the Drawing Tools tabs). If I get
some time soonish, I may try to poke around at that a bit more.
