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Display the slide on which you want to place the image.
Choose Insert⇨Picture⇨From File. The Insert Picture dialog box appears (see Figure 8-4).
Select the picture you want. Switch the view (by using the View button in the dialog box) to see thumbnails or details if either is effective in helping you determine which file is which.
Click Insert. Then within PowerPoint, edit the image (resize, move, and so on) as you would any other object.
Figure 8-4: Choose the file that you want to insert.
| Tip | After importing an image, you may want to work with its properties to apply a border or shadow around it, to set it to a certain size, and so on. You can do this manually, but an add-in is available that will import batches of images at once and apply the same properties to all. Check out the Image Importer Wizard at www.mvps.org/skp/iiw. You can also write a macro that will apply a series of formatting attributes to objects. |
Linking to a Graphic File
If you're sharp-eyed you may have noticed that the Insert button in Chapter 6 with Excel data). This is not a dynamic link that you can manage with the Edit⇨Links command. It's a much simpler link and much less flexible. You can't change the file location to which it is linked, for example; if the location of the graphic changes, you must delete it from PowerPoint and reinsert it.
| Tip | If you are building a graphic-heavy presentation on an older computer, you might find that it takes a long time to move between slides and for each graphic to appear. You can take some of the hassle away by using Link to File rather than inserting the graphics. Then, temporarily move the graphic files to a subfolder so PowerPoint can't find them. It will display placeholders for the graphics on the appropriate slides, and the presentation file will be much faster to page through and edit. Then when you are ready to finish up, close PowerPoint and move the graphics files back to their original locations so PowerPoint will find them again when you reopen the presentation file. |
If you chafe at the limitations of Link to File, like not being able to update the path of the link, you might prefer a real OLE link to the picture instead. Easy enough-it's basically just like linking to an entire Excel workbook, which you learned about in Chapter 6. Follow these steps:
Display the slide on which the picture should appear, and choose Insert⇨Object.
In the Insert Object dialog box, click Create from file. Then click Browse, locate the picture you want, and click OK to choose it.
Click the Link checkbox (see Figure 8-5).
Click OK.
Figure 8-5: You can also link to a picture via an OLE link.
Now you have a real link, and you have access to its settings through the Edit⇨Links command as discussed in Chapter 6. Another advantage to the OLE link method is that if the original is not available, the last saved version will appear in the presentation, rather than an empty placeholder. The disadvantage to an OLE link to the picture is that it basically obliterates the original advantage of the Link to File method, which was to keep the file size small for the PowerPoint file. Since it must store a static copy of the linked picture so that it will appear if the linked file is not available, there is no file-size savings with an OLE type of link (and in fact, an OLE link will make the file size much larger in most cases).
| Tip | Links are not updated in real time, so if the image changes during the show, your show will not reflect it. An add-in is available called Livelmage that will get around this, though, and will update your graphics during the presentation. Check out www.mvps.org/skp/liveimage. |
Acquiring Images Directly From a Scanner
If you have a compatible scanner attached to your PC, you can scan a picture directly onto a PowerPoint slide. Scanning directly into PowerPoint saves time because you do not have to run the scanning software and assign a separate file name to the image.
| Note | The scanner's driver must be compatible with Windows Image Acquisition (WIA), which is a standard for allowing Windows XP to directly interact with a scanner. If you are not sure about your scanner, give it a try. The Hardware Compatibility List at www.microsoft.com/hcl can tell you definitively whether your scanner is directly compatible with Windows XP; if it is, then it will work within PowerPoint 2003. If not, check the scanner manufacturer's Web site to see whether an updated driver is available that will make it WIA-compatible. No luck? You can still use the scanner, but you will need to use its own software to scan the image and then import the image into PowerPoint as a file. |
During the scanning process you can choose to add the image to the Clip Organizer for future use or not. You'll learn about the Clip Organizer in Chapter 9; it's a system of organizing graphic, sound, and video files. If you choose not to add the scanned image there, the image will not exist outside of this presentation, and you will not be able to use it in other presentations or other applications. If you do add it to the Clip Organizer, the image will be placed in a file in the My Documents\My Pictures\Microsoft Clip Organizer folder, in JPEG format. You can also drag the image from PowerPoint into the Clip Organizer to store a copy for future use, or copy and paste the image from this presentation into another one or into other applications.
To scan directly onto a slide, follow these steps:
Choose Insert⇨Picture⇨From Scanner or Camera. The Insert Picture from Scanner or Camera dialog box appears (see Figure 8-6).
Choose the scanner from the Device list.
Choose a resolution: Web (low) or Print (high). Lower resolution means smaller file size and fewer pixels overall comprising the image. Low resolution is the best choice for on-screen presentations.
If you don't want to save the scanned picture in the Clip Organizer, clear the Add Pictures to Clip Organizer checkbox. Otherwise, leave it marked.
Click Insert to scan with the default settings, or click Custom Insert, make changes to the settings, and then click Scan.
Resize, move, or otherwise modify the graphic as needed.
Figure 8-6: Scan an image from PowerPoint using the Windows scanner driver.
The Custom Insert option opens the full controls for the scanner. They vary depending on the model; the box for my HP scanner is shown in Figure 8-7.
Figure 8-7: Custom Insert options.
Here are some of the things you can do there:
Choose a scanning mode: Color picture, Grayscale picture, or Black and white picture or text. This choice determines the color depth. Color is full 24-bit color. Grayscale is 256 shades of gray (8-bit, single color). Black and white is single-bit scanning that produces an extremely small file similar to a fax.
Preview the scan: Click the Preview button to do a test scan and then drag the black squares in the preview area to adjust what portion of the image will be saved when you do the "real scan" by clicking the Scan button.
Choose a paper source: If your scanner has a document feeder (mine does), you'll have that choice on the Paper Source drop-down list in addition to Flatbed (the default).
Adjust the resolution, brightness, and contrast: Click the Adjust the quality of the scanned picture hyperlink to open an Advanced Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 8-8. From here you can drag the Brightness and Contrast sliders and choose a resolution setting (dots per inch). The default is 150 dpi.
Figure 8-8: Advanced Properties for the scanner enable you to change the resolution.
| Tip | It is particularly important to choose an appropriate resolution when scanning directly into PowerPoint, since the image will not exist outside of PowerPoint, so you cannot edit it later in a third-party image-editing application to change its resolution. The default setting of 150 dpi is appropriate in most cases where you will be using the image at approximately the same size as the original, but if you are concerned about file size, you could reduce this to 100 dpi without noticeable loss of image quality on-screen. If you plan on using the image at a large size (like full-screen) and the image was originally a very small hard copy, scan at a higher resolution. |
Acquiring Images Directly From a Digital Camera
There are lots of ways of transferring images from a digital camera under Windows XP. Most cameras can be connected to the PC via a USB port and treated as a removable drive, from which you can drag-and-drop pictures onto a folder on your hard disk. You can also remove the memory card from the camera and use a card reader, and in some cases you can even insert a memory card into a printer and print the images directly.
With all those methods available, inserting directly from the camera into the PowerPoint presentation is probably not your first choice. However, should you want to try it, use the same method as with the scanner: Insert⇨Picture⇨From Scanner or Camera. (Make sure the camera is connected to the computer first and turned on.) Then, just follow the prompts to select and insert the picture.
| Note | When you hear digital cameras referred to as "megapixel" that means a million pixels in total-the height multiplied by the width. For example, a 1,152-by-864-pixel image would be approximately 1 megapixel (995,328 pixels, to be exact). High-end cameras are 5-megapixel or more these days, which is probably overkill for use in your PowerPoint show. Such cameras have settings you can change that control the image size, though, so you can reduce the image size on the camera itself. |
