Why do the colors of my image get worse when imported into PowerPoint?

DaRuSsIaMaN

[H]ard|Gawd
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I'm trying to insert an image into a slide. I used Insert -> Pictures (not simply copy/paste). The colors look quite obviously worse: they're all darker. It's not even a photograph, just a schematic with very few colors. Why is this happening? I think there's some kind of image compression going on that PowerPoint does automatically. I'm using Office 365 Pro Plus. Anyone know how to fix it?

EDIT: Ugh, I tried uploading the screenshot to the thread directly but apparently it gets compressed because the resolution is smaller, and the colors look the same in the images. I uploaded to a hosting site, but again, I think they also do some kind of compression because the difference in colors is less obvious than when I view it on my screen.

Nevertheless here it is (click the zoom in to see it):

color comparison ppt — Postimage.org
 
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colors look the same to me on both. The issue may be because the elements are made up of dots, like a halftone image, and the uploaded one is compressed and losing some of the dots in compression.
 
Because it's being resized. That's a pretty typical pattern when images are resized.
 
also, your view scale is 94% in PP, set it to 100% and see if it looks normal
 
Maybe the image has an odd embedded color profile? Can you open it in irfanview or gimp or something and check the colorspace?
 
Because it's being resized. That's a pretty typical pattern when images are resized.

Are you sure? How is it being resized? The original image is small enough to fit on the regular PPT slide -- it's only 525x570 pixels.

also, your view scale is 94% in PP, set it to 100% and see if it looks normal

Good thought; I tried that but it didn't help, sadly.
 
Maybe the image has an odd embedded color profile? Can you open it in irfanview or gimp or something and check the colorspace?

How do I check that? I do use IrfanView (have been for years) but not sure exactly what you mean. Thanks!
 
How do I check that? I do use IrfanView (have been for years) but not sure exactly what you mean. Thanks!

Well, I'm probably wrong, but if this is a photo then you need to go to Image->Information->EXIF data and find the colorspace - it should be sRGB.
Other than that you could try pasting the image into irfan view and simply save it again under a different name.
 
Are you sure? How is it being resized?.

At least in the screenshot you provided it's because the zoom was at 94%.

See: Resampling Filters -- IM v6 Examples

Scroll down to the very bottom where it says "Shrinking..." and look at the image that shows how different resizing/interpolation algorithms affects downscaling images. Several of them show the same moire pattern that can be seen in the image in PowerPoint.



But maybe that's not what you were talking about. Try uploading a PNG version of the image you posted instead. That would show any color differences.
 
Well, I'm probably wrong, but if this is a photo then you need to go to Image->Information->EXIF data and find the colorspace - it should be sRGB.
Other than that you could try pasting the image into irfan view and simply save it again under a different name.

Hmm well it's not a photo but a diagram created by a program, a bit like AutoCAD. Here's the Information about it:

 
Insert the picture via Insert->Picture. Right click the inserted image, select Size and Position. Scale the height/width to 75% and it should look ok, or check "Best scale for slide show" and choose 1280x1024. Mind you, this might only work if Windows is at the default DPI setting (yours isn't).

Now it has no aliasing caused by resizing twice.
 
I'm guessing there is no colorspace saved to the PNG file by the program that created it. There is also a gamma setting that can cause images to be darker or lighter. PNG files are kind of a loose standard, so I'm guessing PP supports some of the types of PNG types, but probably doesn't fully support what your program saved out.

My guess is Irfanview converts the images to sRGB if there is no colorspace defined in the file. Pretty standard.

Try to save the file out as a JPG in Irfanview. While in there check any boxes that say to convert to sRGB color space.
 
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