COMMUNICATION IN THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Department of Biology

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GUIDELINES FOR SCANNING IMAGES AND INSERTING THEM INTO POWERPOINT

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EXAMPLES OF IMAGES TO CONSIDER INSERTING INTO POWERPOINT SLIDE SHOWS:

• Color (or noncolor) diagrams or photographs from textbooks or web sites
• Tables from textbooks or journal articles
• Technical figures from textbooks, journal articles, or web sites
• Photos that you scan or take with a digital camera

CAN MOST NEEDED IMAGES BE DOWNLOADED FROM THE WEB?

Though many excellent images and visual materials may be obtained from the web, this material is often of inferior quality. For example, a photograph of a fish may be the size of a postage stamp on the web site. When it is downloaded and inserted onto a PowerPoint slide, it will likely look extremely pixilated.

For good results, it is often necessary to use images that you have located from a non-Web source (e.g., a textbook) and then scanned the images.
 

SCANNING IMAGES -- AN OVERVIEW:

Locate a scanner -- the Murphy Library computer lab has a scanner available for student use.

Scan the image in color and save it as a "JPEG" file.

A JPEG file is a special file that efficiently stores a compressed image. It is perhaps the most commonly used type of image file, though other file types (e.g., GIF and TIFF files) are also commonly used for images.

Each image you scan will be stored in its own separate file. As you scan, you will store these files on a computer disc (floppy disc, Zip disc, hard drive, etc.)

Image files can be large, hence the usefulness of JPEG images. PowerPoint files made with uncompressed images (bitmap or TIFF) can be incredibly large -- 20-30 megabytes. The same PowerPoint files made with JPEG images may be only 200 kilobytes! Keep in mind that floppy discs can store approximately 1500 kilobytes (1.5 megabytes).
 

RECOMMENDED SCANNER SETTINGS:

When you scan an image, you will need to specify the scanning resolution (DPI or dots per square inch), whether the image will be scanned in color, grayscale, or black/white and the JPEG compression used. The following table summarizes some general observations, illustrated tradeoffs between the size of the original image, DPI, and how good it looks in PowerPoint. You may wish to deviate from these recommendations if your files are too large or the quality of the image is too poor.

* Recommended settings

Note: Each of these tests were done with the scanner set to scan color, not grayscale or black/white.

Recommendations:

• Set the scanner to scan in color (or possibly grayscale). Grayscale scanning does work well for noncolor images and results in significantly smaller file sizes.

 
• For small images, use 300 DPI scanning resolution with 50% JPEG compression.

 
• For larger images, use 200 DPI scanning resolution with 50% JPEG compression.

 
• Do trial runs to see how large the image file size is and how good it looks after it is inserted into PowerPoint.

 

1. Scan your images (or download from the Web)

Save each image as a JPEG file.

Store your images on one or more floppy discs or a Zip disc.

Note: If you find good images on the Web, just click on the image (Mac users) or right-click (Windows users). You can then store your image on a floppy or Zip disc. These images may or may not be JPEG images.

Insert a "Blank" slide or a "Title Only" slide using the "Insert-New Slide ..." command.

Use the "Insert-New Picture-From File..." command to insert an image from your floppy disc.

Resize the image as needed (make it smaller or larger) by clicking on it and then dragging one of the resize boxes in the image corners.

Copyright © 2001, the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin.