Suppose you are preparing a PowerPoint presentation with pictures from prototype testing of a design or pictures from your vacation. When you insert pictures into the PowerPoint file, you may realize that the file’s size will balloon with addition of each picture. You may end-up with a large PowerPoint file that may perhaps be difficult to distribute or email.
The reason for larger PowerPoint files is twofold. Firstly, Microsoft PowerPoint may not store picture data in an optimum format. Secondly, while today’s digital cameras can capture pictures at high resolutions (between three to five megapixels per picture,) on-screen display requires pictures of just 96 DPI (dots per inch) resolutions. In addition, typical office-document printing requires pictures of no more than 200 to 300 DPI resolutions.
The more-recent versions of Microsoft PowerPoint facilitate compressing pictures easily to create smaller files.
If you desire to compress a single picture or a group of pictures, highlight the pictures. The Picture toolbar will appear, as illustrated in Figure 1. Now, choose “Compress Pictures” from the Picture toolbar. In the resulting dialogue box, make appropriate selections to execute the command.
If you desire to compress all the pictures in your PowerPoint file, an easier approach involves the “Save As” dialogue. From the menu bar, choose “File” – “Save As … .” In the resulting dialogue box, open the “Tools” dropdown and choose the “Compress Pictures” command, as illustrated in Figure 2.