Why does the file get too large when I paste a picture in powerpoint?

TECHNO BYTES Q & A

Why does the file get too large when I paste apicture in PowerPoint?Demetrios J. Halazonetis, DDS, Dr Odont, MSAthens, Greece

This is a common problem that occurs when youare working in an imaging editing program,such as Photoshop, and use the copy-and-paste

method to get the picture into PowerPoint. This is whatyou probably do: you use the Select All command inPhotoshop to select the whole image and then you usethe Edit Copy command to copy the image to theWindows Clipboard. Then you switch to your Power-Point presentation and use the Edit Paste command topaste the image on the slide. However, what is actuallypasted is not the image per se, but the image plusadditional information that ties the image to Photoshop.The image is “encased” in a Photoshop “wrapper” and

is now a Photoshop “object.” You can confirm this byright-clicking on the image in the slide. You will seethat the pop-up menu shows an Image Object command(Fig, A).

The correct method to paste pictures is to use theEdit Paste Special menu command in PowerPoint. Thiswill open the Paste Special dialog box (Fig, B). SelectPicture or Device Independent Bitmap and click OK.Now you have a pure image that takes up much lessspace, and the resulting PowerPoint file is muchsmaller.

If you already have image objects in a presentation,you can convert them to pure images by selecting them,copying them to the clipboard and then repasting theminto PowerPoint using the Paste Special command.Finally, delete the image objects and resave. To reducethe file size even further, you can use the Compressoption (available only in PowerPoint 2002; see theTechno bytes article in the December 2002 issue[122:668-72]).

aAssistant professor, Orthodontic Department, University of Athens DentalSchool, Athens, Greece.Reprint requests to: D. Halazonetis, 6 Menandrou St, Kifissia 145 61, Greece;e-mail, dhal@dhal.com.Submitted and accepted, November 2003.Am J Orthod Dentofacial Orthop 2004;125:7530889-5406/$30.00Copyright © 2004 by the American Association of Orthodontists.doi:10.1016/j.ajodo.2003.11.007

Fig. A, Pop-up menu in PowerPoint shows Image Object command; B, Paste Special dialog box.

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