PPT: May Have to Scale Cross-Platform Bitmaps for Display (113024)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft PowerPoint for Macintosh 2.0
  • Microsoft PowerPoint for Macintosh 2.01
  • Microsoft PowerPoint for Macintosh 3.0
  • Microsoft PowerPoint for Macintosh 4.0
  • Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows 2.0
  • Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows 3.0
  • Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows 4.0
  • Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows 4.0a
  • Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows 4.0c
  • Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows 95
This article was previously published under Q113024

SUMMARY

You may find that a bitmap you have imported into your Microsoft PowerPoint presentation looks good when you display it on one computer, but looks bad when you display it on another.

The quality with which bitmaps display on the screen depends upon the two following conditions:
  • the resolution of the bitmap (dots per inch)
  • the resolution of the video display driver (dots per inch)
For this reason, if the two computers are using two different display resolution settings, the bitmap can look bad when displayed on one, but good when displayed on the other.

This problem occurs most commonly when you have transferred files between the Macintosh and Windows operating systems, because the standard screen resolutions on the two different platforms are quite different. While the most common pixel resolution on the Macintosh is 72 dots per inch, the most common pixel resolution under Windows is 96 dots per inch.

For your bitmaps to look the same at the same percentage view after you have converted your presentation from one platform to another, you may need to scale the graphics. In other words, a bitmap in a Macintosh PowerPoint presentation will most commonly need to be scaled to 75% to look the same when viewed at the same view percentage under Windows PowerPoint. A bitmap in a Windows PowerPoint presentation will most commonly need to be scaled to 133.33% to look the same when viewed at the same view percentage under Macintosh PowerPoint.

NOTE: If you do not intend to deliver the presentation as an on-screen Slide Show, you can ignore the appearance of the bitmap on the screen. Printed output is not affected by differences in screen resolutions between platforms, and the bitmap should print the same from either platform when using the same quality printer.

MORE INFORMATION

In PowerPoint, you can use the Scale command to resize your bitmaps. In PowerPoint 2.0, however, you must resize graphics manually. To do this, measure the size of the object using the guides, calculate the dimensions of the resized picture, and then use the guides to resize it.

If you intend to display the presentation as an on-screen Slide Show, you may need to do some additional scaling to prepare the bitmap so that it looks its best during the Slide Show. This is because PowerPoint automatically scales the presentation to fit within the size of the current display during the Slide Show. For this reason, the slide may display at a percentage different than the one you are using for editing.

For more information about scaling bitmaps for on-screen slide shows, query on the following words in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

scaling and bitmaps and movies and slide and shows and powerpoint

Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:8/16/2005
Keywords:kbdisplay kbinfo KB113024
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