How to Compress Photos in PowerPoint UP TO 80%

Panic! Your presentation that you have been working on for several weeks became over 500 MB large, and you cannot email it to your manager! Take it easy, I have the solution to your problem. In this article, you will learn how to compress photos in PowerPoint. You will also learn how to reduce the file size of media files.

Did you know that you can reduce the file size of your PowerPoint presentation by up to 80% by compressing your images and other media?

Introduction

As you know, I am an advocate for simple presentations with lots of pictures. There are incredibly useful resources for downloading high-quality photos online. My favorites are pexels.com and unsplash.com. However, problems can occur if you use too many of these images without compressing them. Your presentation will be BIG!

I will now present five different methods for you, how to compress photos in PowerPoint. The techniques I will go through are listed below. If you know what you are looking for, just scroll down, but feel free to read all the methods as they fit different well into different situations.

1st Method – Reduce PowerPoint file size by using the best images and photos.

2nd Method – Reduce PowerPoint file size by compressing images and photos.

3rd Method – Reduce PowerPoint file size by compressing media files.

4th Method – Reduce PowerPoint file size by streamlining your PowerPoint file.

5th Method – Reduce PowerPoint file size using 3rd party software (not recommended).

Now let’s go into the depth and start with the first method …

Method 1 – Reduce PowerPoint file size by using the best images and photos.

Okay, this may be obvious to some but not to others – don’t use bigger pictures than you need. We all think that 4K is super cool, and we want the highest quality possible on our PowerPoint slides.

Compress images in PowerPoint

Useful guidelines to stick to are that the images should not be larger than 1920×1080 pixels. This is the standard ratio for widescreen monitors today. If you have this in mind when selecting images, you probably won’t need to compress your photos in PowerPoint.

There are a variety of file formats for images and photos, such as TIFF, JPG, JPEG, BMP, and PNG. PNG is the format you should choose if you want a transparent background. Otherwise, I always recommend using JPEG as the file format for your images in PowerPoint. The reason is simple; this file format often has lower resolution and has a smaller file size.

Method 2 – Reduce PowerPoint file size by compressing images and photos.

Now I have given you some tips on how to think when choosing images to minimize the size of your PowerPoint presentations. If your presentation for various reasons is still too large, I will now show how to compress photos in PowerPoint, which is an excellent method to reduce the file size of your presentations.

1. Select the photo you want to compress

2. Navigate to the Picture Format section

3. Select Compress Pictures

4. Select your Compression Options

5. Select your Resolution

1. Select the photo you want to compress

The first step is to find the image you want to compress. If there are multiple images, you can quickly select them by holding down the shift key, and then clicking on the photos you want to select.

2. Navigate to the Picture Format section

When you select the photos you want to compress, the Picture Format menu will appear in the top PowerPoint ribbon. Click this to see different formatting options for your photos.

Compress photos in PowerPoint

3. Select Compress Pictures

A little to the left, in the Adjust menu, you will find the option Compress Pictures. Click this to compress your photos in PowerPoint. A dialog will now pop up, asking you to make a number of choices.

Compress photos in PowerPoint

4. Select your Compression Options

Now you have the opportunity to influence how to compress your photos. In the first part, you get a number of Compression options. They are relatively self-explanatory. Click in the first box if you just want to compress the image you have selected, click from this box if you want these settings to apply to all images in your presentation.

Compress photos in PowerPoint

The second box is more interesting. Delete cropped areas or pictures. We often crop images when we are doing our PowerPoint presentations. It is logical to assume that if we cut 50% of the image, the file size will be 50%. This is not true. PowerPoint saves the bit you’ve cut, it’s just hidden. Therefore, you can reduce the size significantly by simply selecting delete cropped areas.

Pro Tip: It is logical to assume that if we cut 50% of the image, the file size will be 50%. This is not true. PowerPoint saves the bit you’ve cut, it’s just hidden. Therefore, you can reduce the size significantly by simply selecting delete cropped areas.

5. Select your Resolution

The last step in this second method of how to compress photos in PowerPoint is to choose what resolution you want for your images. Here PowerPoint gives you some guidance and recommendations for which resolution to choose.

If you only present your pictures on the screen, you can go as low as 150 PPI. Here you can test yourself and find a solution you feel comfortable with. Should your presentation only be sent out as a pre-read, you can advantageously make an E-mail version, which you send out.

Good work! If you have no additional media in your PowerPoint presentation, you have probably managed to compress it enough. For example, if you have integrated videos and feel that you need to compress a little – keep reading.

Method 3 – Reduce PowerPoint file size by compressing media files.

This method of how to compress in PowerPoint is straightforward, but very useful if you have embedded videos in your PowerPoint presentation. If you have internet access, I recommend that you embed YouTube videos in your PowerPoint presentation to reduce the file size. Read more about how to embed a YouTube video in PowerPoint here.

Sometimes you have videos saved locally, and then you need to embed the video in your PowerPoint presentation. Then it might be a very good idea to compress it.

1. Navigate to File

2. Click Info

3. Click Compress Media

More difficult than that is not to compress video into PowerPoint. This simple trick can significantly compress the file size of your PowerPoint presentation. As you can see, there are three different options; Full HD, HD, and Standard. Depending on the type of video you are about to present, the Standard format may suffice.

Be a bit careful about the compression of your video. If the video quality is perceived as poor, it can affect the overall impression of your presentation. Test yourself and choose a level that suits you.

For example, if you are a nature photographer who is going to sell a video to a television network, it can be disastrous if you show a video of poor quality. If, on the other hand, you only have to show a tutorial of how something works, it can well be enough with standard quality. As long as it is easy to see what is happening in the video.

When you use this compression tool, the compression is applied to all videos in your PowerPoint presentation. When the compression is complete, the program will announce how much you have saved. As you can see in the image below, you can save a lot on the file size if you are willing to compromise a little on the quality.

Method 4 – Reduce PowerPoint file size by streamlining your PowerPoint file.

Presenting something with many slides is often very simple, but what distinguishes an excellent PowerPoint presenter and a bad one, is that the excellent presenter can present the same with much fewer slides.

This is not really a method of how to compress photos in PowerPoint, but if you master this, you don’t need to compress photos. Go through your presentation and try to find slides that you can remove that do not perform any function.

Another excellent method to compress and streamline your PowerPoint is to clear theme slides that you are not using. If you use a company presentation, there are probably many sides that you do not see, but that still takes up a lot of slides.

1. Navigate to the View tab

2. Select Slide Master

3. Delete slides you don’t use

As you can see on the surface on the left, there are many slides here that we do not use. In this example, I do not use any specific theme, but if I had done so there probably would have been a lot of pictures here that had taken up space.

Once, I helped a client who wondered why the size of their PowerPoint presentations always exceeded 500 MB. The answer was simple; they had about 20 images in their theme that were not compressed. The shared size of these images was +500 MB.

That said, this is not really a method of how to compress photos in PowerPoint, but you can probably save a lot of space by applying these simple tricks. Maybe you can save so much file size that you don’t need to compress your beautiful photos?

Method 5 – Reduce PowerPoint file size using third-party software (not recommended).

Now we have come to the last part of this article on how to compress photos in PowerPoint. I’ve been wondering if I should really include this part, as it involves third-party applications. I generally don’t like these because you let someone else in your system, which might be able to access all your data.

I take this anyway but raise a warning finger. I do not recommend using third-party applications, but if you still want to feel comfortable with it, I do not want to close that door for you.

I recommend that you search for “reduce PowerPoint file size online,” “Reduce PowerPoint file size app” or similar keyword phrase. As you can see in the picture below, there are many hits on this topic.

Use your common sense when uploading a presentation online or downloading a third-party application. It can be a good quick fix to compress your PowerPoint and reduce the file size of your PowerPoint presentation. However, remember to NEVER upload presentations with sensitive data or corporate secrets. Always assume that what you upload online can be seen by others other than you and your company.

Remember to NEVER upload presentations with sensitive data or company secrets. Always assume that what you upload online can be seen by others other than you and your company.

Conclusion

In this article, you have learned that there are a variety of methods of how to compress photos in PowerPoint. Some of these have been of a more proactive nature. That is, you think about what images you use in your PowerPoint presentation and that you do not use more pictures than you actually need.

If you already have a finished presentation but want to compress it, there are two simple methods that I recommend. These will solve your problem. Furthermore, the size of your Presentation can be reduced by up to 80% by compressing your photos in PowerPoint.

Reduce PowerPoint file size by compressing images and photos.

1. Select the photo you want to compress

2. Navigate to the Picture Format section

3. Select Compress Pictures

4. Select your Compression Options

5. Select your Resolution

Reduce PowerPoint file size by compressing media files.

1. Navigate to File

2. Click Info

3. Click Compress Media

Now I hope your panic over the size of your PowerPoint presentation has disappeared. By applying my methods of how to compress photos in PowerPoint, as well as my proactive techniques, you will never have to worry about presentations with a file size of +500 MB.

Final Words

Thanks for reading my tutorials! I appreciate your support, and it’s for you I write. If you have any comments, please feel free to contact me directly. Do you have PowerPoint skills to share? Then you are welcome to apply to become a guest writer here at yourslidebuddy.com. See you again soon!

What does Microsoft say about how to compress photos in PowerPoint? Read about this here.