Graphics Distortion in Presenter 7 and Breeze

[Guest]

I am new to using Breeze, my company uses it. I noticed that the graphics in our .ppt presentations are blurry quite often when we publish the Breeze presentations. We usually insert .gif or .jpg graphics (usually screen shots of applications). I decided to give Presenter 7 and PowerPoint 2007 a try to see if that resolved our issue. It did not.

Does anyone know what we should be doing with static graphics to improve the quality of the graphics (make them crisp instead of blurry) in the final product?

[mrock66]

Do you have the latest version of Presenter 7? 7.0.5? And set quality to "high"?

matt rock | Technical Response Team, Connect

adobe systems

[Guest]

We did download the Presnter 7 demo version. And yes, the quality was set to high.

[Guest]

Rachael,

Quick question: are you using any special stylizing/treatment of your graphics in PowerPoint?  I ask becuase I've seen instances where using effects like drop shadows, glows, etc, (which are available in PPT 07) actually result in low-quality, often blurry, graphics after publishing to Presenter content.

Same goes for taking screen shots and then applying lines/strokes to those graphic elements; it just introduces more .jpg artifacts rendering the graphics practically useless.

I should also mention that after hours of testing, I've also witnessed grouped objects in PPT look blurry after publishing, so I typically look to ungroup whatever/whenever possible.  If that can't be done, then usually it means a trip to Illustrator or Photoshop to manipulate my graphics.

Bottom line, any time specialized treatment is necessary you may have to look outside of PPT to create your graphics; then import as usual and see if that helps any.

In any event, just thought I'd throw that out there.

Rob

http://www.robrode.com/yabb/

[Guest]

Hi, Rob.

Thank you so much for these tips. To answer your question, we are using special stylizing on our graphics as well as grouping. We'll do more testing with these effects. Working with the graphics outside of PowerPoint is not a problem if that is what we must do to achieve the highest quality output.

Thanks again for your feedback. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Regards,

Rachael Jaffe

[Guest]

No problem Rachael!

Kinda figured that what you were experiencing may be due to adding styles to graphics in PPT.

Again, my strongest recommendation: if you need things like drop shadows, strokes, etc to a screen shot in PPT, you're simply better off doing that in Photoshop/Fireworks and then import your jpg/png into PPT.  Otherwise, you run the risk of ending up with less than desirable images after publishing.

Same goes for grouped objects too, as well as grouped objects that include photos that are grouped to PPT-based shapes.  Or at least that's what I've encountered.  Bottom line: break everything down and keep everything as separate elements on your slides.

Give that a shot and by all means let us know how that turns out.  Oh, and one last thing....as MRock66 mentioned, be sure to toggle "highest quality" for your output as well!

Rob

http://www.robrode.com/yabb/