How to Compress Images in PowerPoint (Windows and Mac)

By NexGama Studio · Updated October 28, 2026 · 2 min read

Try it now: Image Compressor — free, no upload.Open tool

A presentation with a few phone photos can easily reach 50–100 MB, too big to email or upload to a class portal. Pictures are almost always the cause, and PowerPoint has a built-in way to shrink them. Here is how to use it on Windows and Mac, and which setting to pick.

Compress all pictures on Windows

Click any picture in your presentation.
Open the Picture Format tab and click Compress Pictures (in the Adjust group).
Untick “Apply only to this picture” so every picture in the file is compressed, not just the one you clicked.
Keep “Delete cropped areas of pictures” ticked. Cropped parts are otherwise still stored in the file.
Choose a resolution (see the table below) and click OK.
Save the file. The size drops only after saving.

Compress all pictures on Mac

Click any picture, then open the Picture Format tab and click Compress Pictures. You can also use File → Compress Pictures.
Choose a Picture Quality setting.
Tick “Delete cropped areas of pictures”.
Select “All pictures in this file” and click OK, then save.

Which resolution should you choose?

Web (150 ppi) — the best choice for most presentations shown on a screen or projector. Big savings, no visible loss.
E-mail (96 ppi) — the smallest file, for sending by email. Photos may look soft on a large screen.
Print (220 ppi) — if you will print handouts.
HD (330 ppi) and High fidelity — keep almost full quality, so the file stays large.

Stop PowerPoint keeping full-size copies (Windows)

Go to File → Options → Advanced → Image Size and Quality. Tick “Discard editing data” and make sure “Do not compress images in file” is not ticked. You can also set the Default resolution to 150 ppi so new pictures are compressed automatically.

Better: shrink photos before you insert them

A 12-megapixel phone photo is about 4000 pixels wide, while a slide is shown at around 1920 pixels. Resizing first gives you full control and a much smaller file:

Open the Image Resizer and set the width to 1920 px (or 1280 px for a picture that fills half a slide).
Run the result through the Image Compressor as JPG. Around 200–400 KB per photo is plenty for slides.
Insert the smaller images into PowerPoint.

Both tools work in your browser, so your photos are not uploaded anywhere.

Still too big?

Check for videos and audio. Embedded media is often bigger than all the pictures together.
Use JPG, not PNG, for photos. PNG photos can be 5–10 times larger. Keep PNG for logos and screenshots.
Need to share a read-only copy? Save as PDF and shrink it with Compress PDF.

Compressing pictures cannot be undone after you save, so keep a copy of the original presentation if you might need full-quality images later.

Tools used in this guide

Image CompressorShrink JPG, PNG or WebP files, optionally to a target size in KB. Image ResizerSet exact width and height in pixels, with aspect lock. Compress PDFShrink scanned or image-heavy PDFs.