Putting EPS vector graphics or PDF pages into PowerPoint s..

External Since: May 31, 2004 Posts: 361

I'd appreciate some general advice and education on how to put EPS
graphics or PDF pages into PowerPoint slides, or make complete slides
from EPS or PDF originals, and come out with slides having good visual
quality on screen or when projected.

My computer is a Mac OS 10.3.9 (Panther).

My graphics are mostly vector graphics in EPS format, with plots, lines,
points, and text labels, usually created in Mathematica or Illustrator
CS, then usually touched up and saved as EPS and/or PDF documents from
Illustrator CS. I also have Adobe Acrobat Standard 7.0 and PowerPoint
11.1 from MOS Office 2004.

The PowerPoint slides I create may get passed on to Windows users -- in
fact, that's the usual reason from making them at all, since I do all my
personal "powerpoint" archiving and projecting entirely in PDF format
using Acrobat or Adobe Reader.

Specific examples:

1) How to insert a small EPS image -- say 2" square -- with a fair
amount of detail (lines, type, etc) into a PowerPoint slide and enlarge
it by dragging to say 4" or 5" square, without getting severe jaggies in
on-screen viewing or projection?

(Jaggies which come, I'm led to believe, from the fact that PowerPoint
only uses the preview or thumbnail in the EPS image, not the PostScript
itself, for on-screen viewing and projection).

2) How to convert a large, detailed 10" by 7" EPS image (about 1.5 MB)
or a PDF page derived from it (about 250 kB) into a complete, finished
PowerPoint slide (i.e., no add'l elements to be added to the slide)?

3) I see that the Save as EPS command in Illustrator CS provides
Preview format options. Is TIFF or PICT a better choice for the preview
image format? Does that depend on whether those EPS files will stay on
my Mac or possibly be sent to Windows colleagues? Does choosing PICT
format mean that the image data stays in vector format, or is it just
converted to PICT bitmap data?

4) If I want to use a small EPS image at larger size in a PowerPoint
slide, should I enlarge the EPS image in Illustrator, then save and use
the enlarged EPS version? Or convert the EPS file to a larger JPEG or
TIFF or GIF in Illustrator, then insert that in the PowerPoint slide?
(And if I do this with an image that's most line art and text, is TIFF,
JPEG or GIF preferable?)

Or can I keep the smaller EPS version but give it a higher-resolution
preview? (There doesn't seem to be a resolution option for the preview
in an EPS file.)

5) What determines the pixel count for the preview image in a EPS file?
Is it the stated image dimension in the EPS file, in inches, times 72?

External Since: Sep 05, 2005 Posts: 3

AES wrote:
> I'd appreciate some general advice and education on how to put EPS
> graphics or PDF pages into PowerPoint slides, or make complete slides
> from EPS or PDF originals, and come out with slides having good visual
> quality on screen or when projected.
>

Export them as Windows Metafiles. That's the vector format (actually a
superset format that includes both vector and raster objects) that
PowerPoint understands.