Scanning Pictures
When scanning pictures that will be included in your poster, we recommend saving them in .JPG format. PowerPoint can import most JPG files easily. If you are not sure about the printing quality of your scanned image, as a general guide, zoom in on the picture until it fills your entire screen and look at it. Doing this should give you a general idea of how well the picture will print when it's enlarged. If it looks pixilated and jaggy you may need to re-scan it at a higher resolution. We don't recommend using graphics that have been saved from the web.

On the flip side, if you use a resolution that is too high you may end up creating a graphic (and therefore PowerPoint file) with an unnecessarily large file size that becomes hard to transmit and open. There is a cap on the resolution where the quality of the graphic will look the same, but the file size will continue to increase as the resolution is increased.

Cutting and Pasting Graphics
There are several different methods of cut and paste because objects act differently depending on what method is used. If you will need to edit the item in its native application (by double clicking, if available) after it is pasted in PowerPoint, use the Ctrl+V keystroke to paste the item in place. Otherwise, we recommend using the Paste Special feature so you have more control over how your graphics look.

Go to Edit>Paste Special and use the explanations below to choose the best option from the pop-up box. This is a general guide that may vary between the different versions of PowerPoint.

• Items pasted as an enhanced metafile cannot be edited in their native application. They can only be ungrouped to dumb objects in PowerPoint. Ungrouping will cause charts, graphs or vector objects to split up into 100s of pieces.
• Items pasted as a picture cannot be edited. Depending on the type of object, the result will be the same as a pasted enhanced metafile or it will turn into a jpg (bitmapped picture).

Resolution
Never, ever incorporate "web" graphics without extreme caution. Most web images have 72 dots per inch (dpi) of resolution, but printing at that resolution looks absolutely terrible, and the figure will be a huge turn-off to prospective viewers. Graphics should have a resolution of 300dpi or more when printed. Try not to enlarge a 300dpi graphic once it is brought into PowerPoint, as it will then decrease the resolution resulting in a lower quality image. If you need pictures, try gaining access to a high quality digital camera. Take plenty of pictures from different angles and with varying lighting to ensure that at least one has crisp detail, good composition, non-distracting background, etc.

Borders & Lines
If you include a photograph, add a gray or black border at least 2 points thick to make it more visually appealing. Choose a line color that is subtly pleasing but barely noticeable to the viewer.

Avoid using lines with a thickness less than 2 points as they won't show up on your poster because they are so thin!