Fuzzy images

[dk]

About a year ago, I was helping my wife, who's a professional
photographer, put together a PowerPoint portfolio. We had to give up
because PowerPoint was automatically making her high-resolution images
look fuzzy, and I couldn't figure out how to get it to stop doing
that.

Now she's working as a photographer for a museum. She recently
supplied some high-res images to another department, which is now
complaining because her images appear fuzzy in PowerPoint. I don't
know as much as I should -- my wife doesn't know what version of
PowerPoint they're using, or even whether it's Mac or Windows. But
assuming it's a recent version of PowerPoint, it shouldn't make much
difference.

She has given them both TIFF and JPEG files.

Is there some sort of special processing that my wife has to do so
that her images will work properly with PowerPoint? Or is there
something the people who are using PowerPoint have to do?

 

[Echo S]

They may be running an image compressor, or they may be sizing the images by
dragging but not holding Shift to constrain the proportions.

You might try providing them with images sized at 1024 x 768, which is a
typical display size and should fill the slide (without the fuzzies) if the
file is set up as "on screen show." And tell them not to run the compressor.
(Also note that PPT 2007's image compression is ON by default, so if they're
using 2007 -- unlikely, but possible, I suppose -- they'll need to go in and
actually turn it off for each presentation. This is not the case in 2003 and
prior -- they'd have to specifically run the various compression options in
those versions.)

I'm sure others will pop in with more ideas, too.

 

[Jean-Pierre FORESTIER]

I wonder if the images aren't too big ! I suppose they Are to show on a
screen but not for printing?

 

[dk]

On Feb 5, 4:29 am, "Jean-Pierre FORESTIER"
Yes, the image files can be quite large -- as much as 30 to 50 MB. Is
there a way of optimizing such images so that they will look right in
PowerPoint?

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

About a year ago, I was helping my wife, who's a professional
photographer, put together a PowerPoint portfolio. We had to give up
because PowerPoint was automatically making her high-resolution images
look fuzzy, and I couldn't figure out how to get it to stop doing
that.

Here's what I figure you're running into:

MUSHY/BLURRY GRAPHICS in PowerPoint
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00065.htm

It doesn't seem so pronounced in 2003 as it does in some of the earlier
versions.

There's also the simple fact that they're displaying your wife's high
resolution images on a computer screen that's probably 2000 pixels across or
less. PPT is downsampling the images to fit them onto the computer screen. It
does a pretty good job most of the time but if you're dealing with really
critical images or eyes, it may be best to provide images that are downsampled
and sharpened ahead of time in Photoshop or some other full-up image editor.

Now she's working as a photographer for a museum. She recently
supplied some high-res images to another department, which is now
complaining because her images appear fuzzy in PowerPoint. I don't
know as much as I should -- my wife doesn't know what version of
PowerPoint they're using, or even whether it's Mac or Windows. But
assuming it's a recent version of PowerPoint, it shouldn't make much
difference.

She has given them both TIFF and JPEG files.

JPEGs, unless saved with compression turned down/off, tend to degrade the
image; TIFF isn't PPT's "native" format. Try PNGs instead.