Optimize picture images to make your presentation file smaller in PowerPoint

High quality images are great for PowerPoint presentations but they tend to make file sizes huge. You can mitigate this, as well as save disk space and reduce download time, by using the Compress Pictures tool. This tool, which is found on PowerPoint's Picture toolbar, is designed to reduce color format with no loss to overall picture quality.

Note: If you do not see the Picture toolbar, point to View, then point to Toolbars, and then click Picture.

To apply compression to an image that you inserted into your presentation, click on the image and then click on the Compress Pictures icon. After clicking on Compress Pictures, the Compress Pictures dialog box appears on the screen. Make the appropriate selections and then click on the OK and Apply buttons.

A few things to keep in mind before working with the Compress Picture tool:

• Compress Pictures reduces the resolution to 96 dots per inch (dpi) for Web and 200 dpi for print, and unnecessary information is discarded.
• Selecting the Delete cropped areas of pictures check box discards the parts of the picture that were hidden during cropping. Discarding this extra hidden information aids in making the file size smaller as it also takes up file size.
• Only certain image types such as .png, .jpeg, .jpg, .tiff, .tif, .bmp, and .gif can be optimized. A photograph is a good candidate for optimization.
• Only images that are inserted into a PowerPoint presentation using the Insert -> Picture procedure can be optimized. Images that are pasted into a PowerPoint presentation cannot be optimized.