Extracting high-res jpgs and pngs from PowerPoint
Oh hey, this is basically a duplicate of a previous article of mine, Extracting animated gifs from PowerPoint, but since it's about extracting a different kind of media from PowerPoint (high-res imagery rather than animated gifs) I wanted to give it its own article, basically for SEO purposes, so people who need it will be more likely to find it.
Feel free to skip down to For Windows users or For Mac users if you don't want all the backstory here...
An agency team reached out to me recently to ask for my help; their client had ordered a high-quality medical illustration from a vendor, but the vendor only provided a PowerPoint slide displaying the image at a smaller size (weird!). The vendor was no longer in the picture; our internal agency team would not be able to contact them to request a high-res version. So, the original ask to my design team was actually about whether we could re-create the exact same image at high resolution — i.e. how much would that cost, how long would it take, etc etc.
I thought this story was very strange; why would the vendor only provide a PowerPoint file? Was this actually a low-res comp, and the client didn't want to pay the vendor for the high-res version, so they fired them in the hopes that my agency design team could reproduce it cheaper? Pretty messed up!
But the first thing I wanted to check out was whether this PowerPoint file actually contained the high-res image. Now, if you right-click and save an image from a PowerPoint slide, you'll usually end up with a smaller, compressed version. PowerPoint basically edits the original image into a smaller file, and that's what you see in the slide, so that's what you end up extracting.
But I knew from some recent research that, in theory, that high-res original image is still in the PowerPoint file, tucked away in a folder of all the original assets that went into making the deck. Now, if the person who created the PowerPoint file embedded a low-res version, then that's all you're going to find hidden in the file. But if they brought in a high-res version, the method below will help you get at it. In my case, the high-res image was in there! So luckily we were able to save a lot of time and the client's money.
For Windows users
Here's the solution for extracting a high-resolution jpg or png image from a PowerPoint file for Windows — that is, assuming the high-res file is really in there. This is how you can find out. So, the shortest version of this process is this:
Change the name of your PowerPoint file from [whatever].pptx to [whatever].zip
That's right, you heard me. You're converting the PowerPoint file into a zip archive, just by changing the file extension.
Now, open that bad boy up.
Navigate to ppt, and then to media.
Your original jpg or png file will be in there. However, depending on the size of your PowerPoint presentation, you might have to dig through tons of files to find the one you want, and the filenames might not be helpful at all.
So, I made up this modified process that isolates the file I need:
Slightly smarter method
Create a new PowerPoint file.
Go to your PowerPoint file where the image you want to extract is, select just the image, and copy and paste it into the new file.
Save the new file locally; name it whatever.
Navigate to that file. Rename the file from [whatever].pptx to [whatever].zip
Open the zip. Navigate to ppt, and then to media.
Your image file will be there. In my case, it was called "image1.jpg".
Drag this file locally somewhere, and that's the version of the image that was originally embedded in the PowerPoint file. It will be formatted at its original dimensions — so, if the person who created the PowerPoint file imported a high-res image, you'll have that. If they imported a smaller version of the image, then you'll only have that.
For Mac users
I haven't done this hands-on, but apparently for Macs it's the same basic exercise but rather than .zip you change the PowerPoint file to a .rar file — that's all! I'm not sure if the folder structure in the .rar file will be the same as I outlined above, but you should have no trouble digging around and finding the image file in there somewhere.
Good luck!
– Manning
Questions/comments? Feel free to contact me at manning@manningkrull.com. I update these articles pretty frequently — best practices evolve over time as the world of digital quickly changes, and I always welcome insights from others.