Powerpoint question

I’m doing my first Powerpoint for a speech tomorrow. All it is going to be is 5-6 pictures used as visual aids. I am adding the pictures straight out of the camera. My question is, my pictures are huge (2272x1704). Should I be resizing them before adding them to the slideshow? The computer I will be using at school is a Mac and I don’t know it’s resolution. On my PC running 1280x1024 I can’t see the whole picture during the slideshow. What would be a good common size? They will be shown on an overhead screen and I assume it won’t automatically adjust, it will just show up as the same resolution as the Mac, right? I want to show the whole picture, no matter the resolution of the display computer.

It shouldn’t matter. Click on the picture and resize them with the handles on the corners. Also, go to http://www.mihov.com/eng/ir.html and get this fantastic image resizer. You can do many at once. It renames all the files mini-filename, just so you know.

You could also send me the file over AIM if you really want.

Ask more if you don’t understand.

Resize it to the size of your “slides.” Each page of your presentation will be full screen when you run it. Basically you just click the little button in the lower left that starts the show. What you see should be what you get on any comp.

Resize the photos in another program (e.g., PhotoShop). Your ppt slides are, by default, 7.5" x 10". Choose a size to fit within that area.

The image will be projected at 72dpi, so choose that as your resolution.

You can further reduce the file size, if necessary, but saving the images (in PhotoShop) as .gif’s and reducing the number of colors.

I mean that the whole slide should be showing during the presentation, and ONLY the slide. So resize the pictures relative to the slide, although I don’t know what the implications of running so many big pictures will be on the speed of the presentation. I’m guessing that loading a gian PPT file on a computer with little RAM could make it stumble.

I know how to resize images, but thanks for the offer! I want to know how they will display within my Powerpoint slideshow…as it is now, when I run the slideshow on my computer, I get the center portion of the image - not the whole picture. I am assuming it is because I placed the 2202x1704 images into the slideshow and my computer will only display at 1280x1024.

For example - I’m doing a travelogue on my trip to Ireland. One of the pictures is a typical Irish breakfast. The whole picture is of eggs, bacon, toast, sausages, black and white pudding…but in the slideshow, I get a close up of a sausage, not the whole plate. Will it display the same on the Mac? And what size should I resize too not knowing the display properties of the Mac? My reasoning is since the pictures will be displayed overhead (larger than life) I would like them to keep the original resolution for clarity, but not if only a portion of the picture will be displayed. Does that make more sense? Thanks!

Sorry - everyone was replying while I was dicking around with my reply. I think I know what to do.

your resolution will never be better than 72 dpi, so you should resize the images accordingly.

If you keep the 600 dpi, 6 foot by 4 foot picture in the presentation, but then just resize it onscreen, you’re still only displaying 72 dpi. But you’re carrying all the data for a 600 dpi, 6 foot by 4 foot picture. For no reason. so resize outside of ppt.

You’ll be dealing with two separate resolution questions: the resolution of the machine you’ll be running on, and the largest resolution which the digital projector handles. I’m guessing the digital projector is likely to be the bottleneck. (I use a presentation program other than Powerpoint, so I can’t give you any ppt-specific help; but do you know for sure you can run on a Mac?)

800x600 is usually a safe standard even for older digital projectors. Another thing you might do is use whatever image editing program you’re working with to see what size the backgrounds included with Powerpoint are; if you match your slide sizes to those, you’ll probably be safe.

I think I got it. I resized within Powerpoint (mostly because I’m still writing the actual speech and don’t want to spend all night working on the PP show) by clicking on the picture and resizing each to 7.5x10. That works much better, then I compressed. The original slideshow was 9.5 MB, with resizing and compressing I got it down to 485k. Small enough to stick on a floppy. The Mac does have an external floppy drive, and my Professor says it will run Powerpoint, so I think I’m set. Powerpoint is not required for this particular speech, but some other presentations we will be doing will require doing a PP show, so I assume the Prof knows what she’s talking about.

PS - I’m writing the speech the night before not because I’m a procrastinator, but since this is a three-week summer course it is very compressed - each three hour daily class equals one week in a normal semseter. We first met on Monday and there was a ton of reading to do, plus I had to write and give a speech the second day. I started writing this one last night, and am polishing it up tonight to present tomorrow. Plus I just got my MS Office program and Powerpoint today. This schedule doesn’t leave much time for error. Whew.