University of Nebraska Kearney

Save room on your hard disk and reduce download time by using Compress Pictures, a feature on the Picture toolbar in PowerPoint.

The Picture toolbar gives you options for reducing image resolution; applying compression with no loss to quality; and discarding unwanted information, such as the cropped parts of an image

Which pictures can you optimize?

Only certain image types can be optimized and they have to be inserted onto the slide in a way that makes them editable by PowerPoint. Don't copy and paste or drag images in.

Inserting the image

Use the Insert menu, Picture command, and insert either from the Clip Art task pane or from a file, scanner, or camera. This stores the image natively in PowerPoint; whereas, if you do a copy and paste, PowerPoint treats the image as an object, which it cannot optimize.

Ineligible file types

Pictures you can't optimize have a drawing type of format ("vector") and have file extensions such as WMF, EMF, CDR, and EPS.

Eligible file types

High resolution images such as photographs are good candidates for optimization. Eligible file types include PNG, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, and GIF.

Reduce Resolution

Note the area in the middle of the dialog box called Change resolution. Use this when you don't need every single pixel in the current image to get an acceptable version of it for your slide show or Web presentation or your printed output. This can be effective with images you've scaled to be smaller, as their "dots per inch" actually increase in that case.

Changing the resolution can affect image quality. Before saving your file, look at your images in Slide Show mode after reducing the resolution. If you're not happy with the reduced resolution, select that picture in normal view, and use the Reset Picture button on the Picture toolbar to restore the original resolution.

Reduce Color Format

Depending on how many colors are used in the image, sometimes its color format can be reduced to make its file size smaller. The Compress pictures option (within the Compress Pictures dialog box) does this, making color take up fewer bits per pixel. There's no loss in quality

Another option you have in the Compress Pictures dialog box is to delete "trimmings" from an image that you have cropped. Using this option, Delete cropped areas of pictures, can significantly reduce the size of an image file.