Managing Images With a PowerPoint Photo Album

Page created 7/27/2008

You have found a great set of pictures to use in a PowerPoint show and plan to insert them, one at a time, into a new show. The only problem is that some of these pictures are huge and bleed off the edge of the slide.

Old solution to the problem

First you insert the image and then drag the image over so that you can find a corner and begin to drag the image smaller. Each time you move the image back on the slide and keep dragging the image smaller and smaller. Oops, you got it too small, so now you need to … well, you get the idea.

New solution to the problem

Put all of the images into a photo album (in PowerPoint). Insert the entire album and PowerPoint automatically resizes and inserts all of the images at once. Note: The procedure described below includes suggestions for collecting images from a source that has huge images. If you already have some huge images you may skip steps 2 through 4.

Step 1 - Create a new folder on your desktop named 4show.

Step 2 - To collect huge images for this activity go to The Astronomy Picture of the Day and save several images. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Other image sources can be found on the Internet4Classrooms graphics page

As soon as the page is displayed, click on the picture to get a larger image. After the image fully downloads right-click on the image and select the option to save the picture. Save the picture into the new folder you made.

Step 3 - Use the Back button to return to the smaller image and scroll to the bottom of the page.

Step 4 - Click on the left pointing caret to go to the previous days’ image.

Continue this process until you have collected four or five images.

Step 5 - Open PowerPoint.

From the Insert menu select Picture and then select New Photo Album.

When the Photo Album dialog box opens, select Insert picture from File/Disk.

Using the Look in: box at the top, navigate to find and select your 4show folder.

Click one time on any image in the folder.

Hold down the Ctrl key and tap one time on the letter A key, to select all images in the folder, and then click on the Insert button.

The default picture layout is fit to slide; that is the layout we want. Click on the button labeled Create.

Voilà! PowerPoint magic!