Digital Camera Picture Quality - PowerPoint

[Scott Gance]

I am on a windows xp system, the program is power point
2000.

I an using a sony digital still camera.

The picture quality is 5.0 mega-pixel fine quality
(2592 x 1944)

After I bring the pictures onto my hard drive I then
bring them into my powerpoint program. Because the
pictures are to large I drag the bottom right corner
towards the center of the picture to maintain the ratio
of the picture. The pictures look great on the computer,
but when I print to my HP Photosmart printer at the best
quality, the pictures do not look as good as they
should. The pictures are in jpeg format.

If anyone can help me with how I can achieve a better
print quality of the picture I would be most
appreciateive. It is important for me to use the
Powerpoint program, because I am creating a brochure with
text and other graphics.

Looking forward to any suggestions and help

Scott

 

[D Small]

If you have a web page, you will get the same effect, since FrontPage (for
instance) and PowerPoint both do a lot of compressing every time you do any
resizing right in the program.

Your best bet is to first send your photo to your image editing program and do
the resizing (pixels or inches, and resolution (no. pixels per inch). In that
kind of program, you don't usually squeeze the handles to make a photo smaller,
you use a combination of pixels or inches and resolution. You can make a
picture fairly small, but control the quality of the picture with the
resolution. The common resolution for a web page is either 72 or 96. The common
resolution for printing is 200-300 at least. If you send material to a slick
magazine, your resolution would be set for 1400 and up. You might want to find a
little tutorial, or ask others

If you are in Windows, you may already have this program that might have been
installed with your scanner (simple program to practice in). It is Windows
registered and copyrighted by Kodak, and it is called Imaging for Windows.
Start>Programs>Accessories>Imaging. You can use the File>Open on your computer
to find pictures on your machine, though this program doesn't deal with many
file types. Your own camera help files should be able to tell you how handle
pictures for either the web or for printing.

The secret is to learn how to arrive at the proper size and resolution in your
image editor before you ever save to a format to be used in PowerPoint.

 

[Austin Myers]

A couple of things to consider Scott.

PowerPoint is realy designed to "present" on a PC monitor/projector, and
it's very limited when it comes to serious "art" layout work. You may be
much further ahead using something more in line with your goals. (MS
Publisher comes to mind.)

Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

 

[TAJ Simmons]

Scott

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

It is important for me to use the
Powerpoint program, because I am creating a brochure with
text and other graphics.

Powerpoints best feature is presentation for on-screen use.

I'd use something else if I was creating a brochure.
Corel Daw?

Cheers
TAJ Simmons
microsoft powerpoint mvp

awesome - powerpoint backgrounds,
free sample templates, tutorials, hints and tips etc
http://www.powerpointbackgrounds.com

 

[John O]

You may be

much further ahead using something more in line with your goals. (MS
Publisher comes to mind.)

Or Pagemaker, InDesign, Quark (gak) or something like that if you will build
brochures regularly. If you plan to have these brochures professionally
printed then you'll want to convert the images to tif, too.

PowerPoint really isn't a good choice for brochures. Yes, it is easy to use
for the design, but it prints like poo.

-John O