Yes, undoubtedly a presentation with relevant pictures is more effective than plain text slides. However, even if pictures enhance appearances, they can also phenomenally increase the size of your presentation file. Picture compression can help. Recent versions of PowerPoint do some automatic picture compression, even if you are not aware. There are options to make any such compression even more effective. The Compress Pictures feature reduces the size of all in the presentation in a single step. It does so by reducing the picture resolution to the amount needed for the type of output you specify (E-mail, Screen, or Print).
Picture resolution is measured in PowerPoint in pixels per inch, or ppi. This roughly translates to dots per inch (dpi) on a printout. A computer screen shows 96 pixels per inch, so you do not need higher resolution than that if you are only showing your presentation on-screen.
Don't worry, you just have to add a new value in the Registry to tell PowerPoint what resolution to use when converting slides to JPEG images. Save your presentation and close PowerPoint 2010. By default any image included in slideshow created using Microsoft Office PowerPoint is compressed, resulting in loss of quality i.e. High quality images are reduced to low quality. Though for most of the cases this is ok as it saves time,specially when you want to run it on a website but if you.
However, if you are distributing the presentation in other forms, a higher resolution might be appropriate. To reduce the resolution and compress images within, follow these steps:. Open the presentation, navigate to any slide that contains a picture and select it.
This brings up the Picture Tools Format contextual tab on the as shown in Figure 1 (highlighted in blue). Figure 1: Picture Tools Format tab. Note: The Picture Tools Format tab is a contextual tab. Contextual tabs are special tabs in the that are not visible all the time; they make an appearance only when you are working with a particular slide object which can be edited using the options within these tabs. Within the Picture Tools Format tab, click the Compress Pictures button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2.
Figure 2: Compress Pictures button. This opens the Compress Pictures dialog box, as you can see in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Compress Pictures dialog box The Compress Pictures dialog box is divided into two sections: Compression options and Resolution. Note that some options within the Resolution section might not be available for selection (greyed out); this is because the inserted picture has already been compressed.
Options within both of these sections are explained below: Apply only to this picture: This check-box, when selected enables you to compress just the selected picture. If you want to compress all the pictures in the presentation, make sure you deselect this check-box, as you can see highlighted in red within Figure 4. Figure 4: Apply only to this picture check-box deselected Delete cropped areas of pictures: If you have and you want to delete the cropped-out areas of pictures to save additional space, select the Delete cropped areas of pictures check-box (see Figure 4, above).
High fidelity: This is the default option for picture compression in PowerPoint 2016, and you may see it always greyed out. This option preserves the quality of the original picture unless it exceeds the size of the document canvas. HD (330 ppi): Choosing this radio button will enable compression for Screen resolution to display the presentation on high-definition displays. Some projectors have a higher resolution than a monitor.
Print (220 ppi): Select this radio button if you are printing the presentation on paper; it keeps the photos at a resolution where they will look crisp on a printout. Web (150 ppi): Choosing this radio button will enable compression for Screen resolution to display the presentation using a projector or distributing via Internet. E-mail (96 ppi): Select this radio button if you are e-mailing the presentation to others, because this lower setting results in a smaller file that will transmit more easily via e-mail. Note: Some e-mail servers have limits on the file sizes they accept, so keeping the PowerPoint file as small as possible when distributing via e-mail is a good idea. If you send someone an e-mail with a large file attached, the server may reject the message, but you might not get an error message back from the server at all, or you might not get one for several days.
Use default resolution: Select this radio button to select the default output target for picture resolution. You can find default picture resolution within the PowerPoint Options dialog box; explore our tutorial to learn more.
Choose the options based on your requirement, and click the OK button to apply the changes. Make sure you save your presentation.
Imagine this – it’s late at night and you’re finishing up your last few slides for your big presentation tomorrow. You’ve done your final check and your is all ready to be sent out. You are finally satisfied with how it looks and click the send button.
To your horror, the email bounces back. Large attachments are one of the most common causes for bounced emails. These huge files can cause difficulties in sending out emails or even online uploading. Especially in corporate organizations, email filters tend to block large attachments for security’s sake.
But if you want to include some images to ensure your looks great, what do you do? Worse, in plenty of in the market, few actually teach you different ways to compress your PowerPoint files before sending as an attachment via email or only cover it on Windows or OSX. Fear not, here are some ways in which you can reduce the size and save space. Compressing PowerPoint files on Apple OSX If you own a Mac but still need to use PowerPoint for work, you’re in luck. There are a few ways of compressing PowerPoint files to fit your file limit in organizations with email filters so you won’t need to use file-sharing services like DropBox or Wetransfer. Method One – Compressing All photos on PowerPoint More often than not, PowerPoint balloons in size because of high-resolution stock photography that you might include in your presentation. Thankfully, there’s an easy way to quickly compress these files across the whole file.
On the file menu, click “reduce compress pictures” 2. Select your compression size according to the table Unless you’re intending to print the PowerPoint file, you shouldn’t have photos sized at 220ppi. We’ve found that the best setting in most cases is 150ppi – such that it preserves minimal quality for use. If you’re really in the need of smaller sizes, using 96ppi is your last resort.
3.Select “delete cropped area” 4. Choose “all pictures in this file” 5. Click “Ok” Method Two – Picture Format Note that this is, in fact, the same method of compressing the images but gives you more control as to which photos you want to compress and leave the ones you don’t want to in higher resolution. Select the “Picture Format” tab when selecting one or a few images 2.
Click on the Adjust button 3. Select Compress Pictures 4. Select your compression size according to the table 5. Select “delete cropped area” 6. Choose “all pictures in this file” 7. Click “Ok” Alternatively, if you wish to be selective about the photos being compressed, PowerPoint provides another option to compress only specific images. Under steps 4 and 6 respectively, you will be able to choose between the option of all pictures or just a selective few.
However, if you wish to retain the size of the slides and still send it to people, you can consider zipping the file. Most of the time, people choose this option in order to keep the resolution at its highest without compromising it. Method Three – Compressing Before Inserting Images There will always be a limitation of how small image sizes can be using the inbuilt compression application in PowerPoint. One of the most foolproof ways to ensure file sizes are optimised is to optimise the images even before you insert them into PowerPoint. Here’s how: 1. Reduce the size of images losslessly using browser-based applications Tools like and are great to reduce the size of your files without installing any additional applications on your machine. Optimize the dimensions of your presentation images before inserting into PowerPoint This step is most commonly overlooked by most executives simply because it’s pretty tedious.
It involves ‘pre-cropping’ the images you plan to insert into your presentation even before you try any of the methods before this. A) The first step is to determine the max dimensions of your slide. You can do this by accessing the ‘slide size’ in the ‘design’ tab. B) Enter ‘Page Setup’ when navigating into ‘Slide Size’ to identify the dimensions of each slide. If you’re using any of the typical slide dimensions like Standard (4:3) or Widescreen (16:9), typically the safe dimension is 1024px x 768px and 1280px 720px respectively. C) The very next step is to start cropping the images to fit within the slide dimensions.
For example, if your image is 3000px x 2000px, cropping it down to size will save you a lot of space. Using sites like, you can quickly resize images to fit your slide canvas.
At the same time, if you’re using raster editing programs like Adobe Photoshop, you can easily reduce the dimensions of your images before saving. Otherwise, site-based tools work too. Method Four – Zipping Files This method is best performed at the end and works regardless of whether you actually compressed the images prior or not. Right-click on selected PowerPoint file 2. Select “Compress” 3. A zip folder will appear Ready to be sent out!
Not a Mac user? While we do most of our work on MacBooks, we occasionally use other laptops under the Windows operating system as well. For Windows users, the way to reduce file size for Powerpoint presentations can be a little different but follow the steps below and you’re on your way. Compressing PowerPoint files on Windows The approach here is very similar to the way it’s done in Mac where you can compress all the images in PowerPoint files with just a few clicks.
Select an image or picture in the slides 2. Click the Picture Tools tab on the top ribbon 3. Next, select the Format tab 4. Under the adjust segment, click on the Compress icon 5.
Select your preferred compression size 6. Select “delete cropped area” 7. Choose “all pictures in this file” 8. Click “Ok” That’s it! Notice the big difference in size? Now, you’ll be able to send out the emails without worrying about large attachments. These handy ways to cut down on file size have been a lifesaver for us, and we hope they’ll be helpful for you as well.
Let us know if you have discovered other methods in the comments section below!