exporting drawings

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Guest

Suppose I am using PPT to make a drawing to insert it into Word. I would
like to be able to crop and size the drawing I made before exporting. Say, my
drawing is not filling the whole slide and has a different aspect ratio. How
to go about it? In Adobe Illustrator or PhotoShop, one can select a part of
the picture and save only the selection. Is anything similar available in
PPT? Without going through another software, that is.

thanks,
 
T Conrad replied:

Jan,

The powerpoint picture toolbar has some rudimentary photo/picture editing
tools. These tools are also available in Word. Crop, brighten, compress,
contrast, etc.

MS Office, has several distinctions between drawings and pictures. A picture
is a unified object that is in one of several image formats (.jpg,.png, ,bmp,
,tif). Pictures can be cropped, resized, brightened, etc., drawing objects
cannot be cropped... etc.

A drawing, i.e., is usually composed of a series of objects created using
MS-DRAW autoshapes (rectangels, lines, circles, freeform, etc.) The objects
may be grouped or ungrouped. When these objects are pasted into Word, the
default paste method is MS Office Draw objects. Generally, a drawing object
in Word behaves exactly like a drawing object in powerpoint. (Exception, if
your word options are set to use the drawing canvas, then the drawing objects
will insert to a drawing canvas. The canvas functions as a container for all
of the other drawing objects.)

To get a croppable drawing (image)
In powerpoint, select the drawing objects that make-up your picture. If you
want the whole slide select all. Group the objects into a single object.
You must paste the selection into word or powerpoint as an some form of
image (.jpg, png, enhanced metafile, .bmp), using the paste special command
(edit menu, paste special). When you paste the image the background may
change. If you did not have a colored background, then the total background
may change to black.

Since an image pasted into word requires alignment information, I personally
find it easier to perform a paste special into powerpoint, make my
adjustments to the picture, and then select, copy and paste the image into
word. Once the picture is in word, I then perform the necessary alignments,
sizing etc.

Tom C

=====
 
Tom,

Thanks a lot. You did say something that has bothered me for quite a while,
namely changing background color while special pasting line drawing into
Word. To be honest, I have never understood this and still do not.

I am a scientist. I prefer to make simple drawings in PPT as I am more
familiar with it as with Adobe programs, which may appeal more to an artist.
However, I have to do two things: place the drawing into a Word document AND
save it as a separate file for future printing (assume the final product is a
book or a journal article). Thus, I need to make all my drawings into, say, 3
in wide (the height may vary), 300 dpi, save it as jpeg and then insert it as
a picture from a file. Thus, my question was if I can do the sizing and
cropping from within PPT 2003.

With your answer I have tried the paste special option, just for the fun of
it, and sure enough I got a totally black rectangle pasted into my Word
document. I have changed the background to white in ppt to no avail. I
remember fighting this battle before. Pasting the drawing into a number of
other programs resulted in the same black background. I ended up redoing my
drawings in Illustrator. But then, try to fill an object with a simple
pattern, say dashed. You would have to make it yourself as it only has very
fancy stuff.

Sorry for my venting off, but it is a bit frustrating :-(
 
PowerPoint is not really designed for picture editing. But, if you feel
comfortable using it in this manner, then you might want to look here to
ensure your 300dpi images.
Improve PowerPoint's GIF, BMP, PNG, JPG export resolution
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00052.htm
 
Many thanks Michael. It should do it.

Any comments on black background while pasting special, anybody?
 
Jan,

My understanding of this behavior, is that essentially, when a powerpoint
(word) grouped drawing object is pasted as an image, the background of the
grouped object is read as black. I'm certain it has something to do with a
high bit versus a low bit during the conversion process.

I ignore it. My work around is to use place a rectangle [white fill (or
other color) /no borders] behind the drawing. The background fill color
should not match the color fill or border colors of any of the selected
objects (Gray 10% is useful).

For example, lets start with 3 rectangles connected by connector arrows.
When I select these multiple objects and then group them, the dimensions of
the grouped object are 4"x5".
If I try to color fill, the grouped object, I will fill the 4"x5", but I
will also fill the boundaries of the rectangle. By placing and aligning a
rectangle of 4"x5" behind the grouped object I can fill the background object
with any color. I ungroup my original drawing object and then regroup it with
the background to create a single group.

I get a color filled background, that I can use the transparancey tool on
and I don't get a black background.

Tom C
 
Jan,

I've had to resort to using powerpoint or word draw, to create the original
draft copies of line drawings, too. (My company wil only pop for one adobe
license for the graphics editor.) After creating the drafts we too go through
the conversion process to jpg via adobe illustrator, for the final copy.

A sidebar discussion regarding the conversion of ppt drawings to jpg via
adobe illustrator. I recently encountered a unicode font issue doing
conversions of ppt drawings directly from ppt format to illustrator. We had
illustrator 10, a 2000-2001 product and were converting a ppt 2003 drawing.
The IT dept had recently installed foreign language support, and thus unicode
font support. PPT 2003 drawing objects use unicode fonts as the default font
for empty (text free) autoshapes. When we tried to convert the drawings, my
editor lost an afternoon's work because the older illustrator could not
understand the newer (2003) unicode fonts. oops! The work around was to
ensure that every autoshape had at least 3 text characters in it, in order to
force, ppt to use the default english font. We used blank spaces. The
conversion was then error free.
The final solution was to upgrade adobe.
 
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