When exporting from PowerPoint to PDF, how do I prevent image compression?

Question

It seems Powerpoint is compressing the images in my slides (each slide in my powerpoint is 1 large image). I have turned off image compression in the advanced settings.

Answer 1

If you're using Powerpoint 2007 or 2010 then the max DPI it will save a PDF at is 220, even if image compression is turned off.

You could install PDF printer software like PDFCreator then "print" your presentation, make sure to check the High Quality checkbox. In PDFCreator click Options then Formats -> Compression and change the compression from Automatic to the level of compression you want e.g. JPEG-Minimum. I wouldn't recommend completely turning off compression as this will create a huge PDF document.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

Answer 2

Note that the export bitmap resolution may be increased to a maximum of 300DPI by making the following registry change for the corresponding version of PowerPoint:

2016 : HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\PowerPoint\Options
2013 : HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\PowerPoint\Options
2010 : HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\PowerPoint\Options
2007 : HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\PowerPoint\Options
2003 : HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\PowerPoint\Options

Add a new DWORD value, ExportBitmapResolution and set it to decimal 300.

Full info from Microsoft at : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827745/en-gb

Answer 3

Best solution, as of August 2016:

http://www.zamzar.com/convert/ppt-to-pdf/ - I have spent about half a day testing different online and offline methods. At the end the one that I found to convert a presentation to PDF with a perfect quality is Zamzar.

Things that I have tried and the image quality is still terrible

1. Creating a Google Presentation and export as PDF: Fail
2. Converting a Power Point presentation to PDF: Fail
3. Trying the registry trick as suggested by Micro$oft: Fail (I don't why, no difference still).

Answer 4

I found a way, 2 easy steps

1. Save the Powerpoint as PNG first, it would be in several files if you have more than one slide

2. Just search for "convert png to pdf" in Google and use an online tool to convert PNG to PDF

That should work

Answer 5

Use a PDF printer. Try printing to a PDFCreator "Printer", then it will output from the RAW .prn file a PDF, which should containt your Resolution settings.

I normally don't support using 3rd party software, but sometimes you have no choice. In my cases it worked like a charm :)

Answer 6

This helped me on Powerpoint 2010, with Adobe Acrobat installed:

1. Set the quality settings to maximum in the options menu
2. Select "File"
3. Select "Save As", (NOT "Save as Adobe PDF")
4. Select "PDF (*.pdf)" in the file type dropdown menu
5. Save the file

Answer 7

I have been struggling with this for a while. You can delete everything else on a slide and save your background as a picture file and when you Format Background, import that File. Now the background will show up in the .pdf file.

Answer 8

I found the best resolution and very satisfied, File> Print > Choose Microsoft print to PDF (as your printer) > Click printer properties > Advanced > Change the paper size to A3 > OK > OK > Print. DONE You will get almost the same image quality