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Preparing slides for use in PowerPoint Presentations

1. Scan slides or images that you would like to use in your slideshow. Set the dpi according to your needs (for slides, you may need to set the dimensions in pixels or inches, in addition to the dpi).

2. Clean up the image. You may need to sharpen or color correct an image To sharpen, use the Unsharp Mask filter (FILTER > SHARPEN > Unsharp Mask).

If you need to sharpen the image more, just apply the filter again. If there is a color cast to the image, you may want to use the Levels tool or the Variations tool.

3. Crop the Image. You may need to crop the image to remove unwanted borders. Select the crop tool, and drag around the area of the image that you would like to keep. When you have the area selected, press the Return key to accept the crop. Press command-. to cancel the crop.

4. Resize the image. If you are preparing the image for use in a PowerPoint presentation that will only be used on screen, you will want to make a few changes to the size and dpi of your image. You will need to know the target size of your image. If you plan to have the presentation shown on a screen with an 800X600 resolution, you will need to make sure than your image dimensions fit within that resolution (height no larger than 560 pixels and width no larger than 760 pixels). Open the Image Size dialog (IMAGE > Image Size…) to change the size. Set the dimensions first, and click OK. Go back into this dialog again to set the resolution to 72 dpi (anything higher is wasted space).

5. Save your files. There are several different file types that can be used in PowerPoint. I would suggest using a JPEG for the simple reasons that it is a compressed file type that is compatible between the Mac and Windows operating systems.

6. Place the files into a PowerPoint Presentation. After your images are prepared, you are ready to place the files into your presentation. To insert an image into a slide, go to INSERT > PICTURE > From File…. Locate your file, and click the Insert button.

7. Position your image on the slide.

A couple of things to keep in mind:

1. Do not resize JPEG images. JPEG is a lossy compression format that will degrade with each subsequent modification to the file, and with each save. Work with the native Photoshop file, and only save as a JPEG when you are happy with your results and are ready to put the image into your slideshow.

2. If you choose to link to your images, rather than embedding them, you will need to keep all of those images in the same folder as your powerpoint slide show. For example, if my file name is slideshow01.ppt, and I have a folder named "Images" which contains all of my files, I would create a folder called "Slideshow 01", and make sure that folder contained the powerpoint file as well as the "Images" folder.

More information:

Scan Tip 003 - Tips and Resources for Scanning and Using Images in PowerPoint