In my earlier article, Slideshows in a Digital Age. I talk about the need to resize images down to something that resembles the projectors inherent resolution. The idea is that since a good projector can only handle 1024 x 768 pixels, embedding a picture bigger than that only strains powerpoint and your hard drive — the projector still only puts 1024 x 768 pixels onto the screen.
So here’s a quick and easy approach for Mac users if you don’t want to fire up either Lightroom, Aperture or Photoshop:
- Copy the pictures you have chosen for your presentation into a folder on your desktop called “Resize.” Note that I said “Copy” — this is important since this process changes the files themselves and you don’t want to mess up your originals.
- In Finder, select all the images in “Resize” (you know about Ctrl-a, right?).
- Double click on one of the selected images — this will open them all in Preview.
- Select all the images in Preview (Again, Ctrl-a).
- In the Tools menu, click on “Adjust size.”
- Change to “pixels” in the dropdown to the right of “Width” and “Height.”
- Change “Width” to 1024 and make sure “Scale proportionally” is checked.
- After you click OK, you will see shrunk images.
- Do a File | Save ALL and you will now have a nice folder full of resized images.
- Use these images for your powerpoint.
This is a really quick and simple approach to making your powerpoints more efficient, faster loading and less likely to crash.