If you’ve packaged your presentation with loads of pictures, you may notice that your file size has increased dramatically. If you plan to upload this presentation to the web, users who wish to download the presentation may have to spend a bit of time waiting for the download to be completed. You can save this annoying time lag by reducing the file size of the images in your presentation without losing the quality of the images and in turn reduce the size of your final presentation. In this Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 tutorial, you will learn how to reduce the file size of pictures in your presentation and thereby reduce the size of the overall presentation.
Take the simple example of a cropped picture. You might assume that when an image is cropped it reduces in file size. On the contrary, the cropped regions still form part of the image data file and add to the file size.
Open up a presentation and go to the slide that includes a cropped picture. On the Picture Tools Format tab, in the Arrange group, click Crop.You’ll noticed that the cropped areas still form part of the picture. You can eliminate such unwanted data by compressing the picture. Ensure that compression is saved before proceeding with picture modifications such as applying artistic effects, removing the background and other editing options.
In this tutorial, let’s see how we can eliminate the hidden picture information and reduce the file size of pictures in your presentation.
How to Reduce the File Size of Pictures in Your Presentation
1. Open the presentation that contains the image that needs to be compressed.
2. Select the File tab and in the right pane, check the file size of the presentation. In this particular instance, it is 1.30MB.
3. Select the File tab, then navigate to the slide that contains the image to be compressed.
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4. Select the image to be compressed and then select the Picture Tools Format contextual tab.
5. On the Picture Tools Format contextual tab, in the Adjust group, click Compress Pictures.
6. In the Compress Pictures dialog box, uncheck the Apply only to this picture check box. This will ensure that the compression is applied to all images. Then select the Screen option to reduce the size of the pictures to 150ppi which is perfect for viewing on web pages and on projectors.
7. Click OK and click the Save button to apply the changes.
8. On the Picture Tools Format contextual tab, in the Size group, click Crop. Notice that the greyed out section is removed.
9. Similarly, select the File tab and check the file size. It will have reduced in size.
You can effectively reduce the size of the PowerPoint presentation by reducing the size of the images included therein.
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It is kind of odd that cropped images that are smaller than the original one are larger in size. Microsoft should make process of compressing images automatic or have an option to compress all images at once.