A picture can say 1000 words, but it can also take up 1000 kb. How do we balance the increasing need for visually stimulating presentations, emails, and documents with the challenge of increasing file sizes? As digital cameras and scanners technology advances to allow for higher-quality photos, we are faced with the challenge of managing our file sizes for sharing our work. In the past we recommended third-party software to decrease your picture file size, but now in Office 2010 you can manage your pictures while adding them to your documents, presentations or emails.

Office 2010 has several new tools for working with pictures and graphics that were previously done in third-party applications such as cropping, color corrections, artistic effects and compressing pictures. In the example below, the file size was able be reduced from 1,886 kb to 586 kb by compressing the pictures

How to Compress Pictures in Office 2010

The following steps can be performed in any Office 2010 program the same way demonstrated below using Word 2010.

1. Select the picture that you want to compress. With the picture selected the contextual ribbon for picture tools will become active.
2. Click on Compress Pictures

Word 2010 Compress Picture Tool on the Picture Tools ribbon

3. The Compress Pictures dialog box will open.

Compression options:

• Check Apply to this picture only if you want to restrict which pictures are compressed and how. Compression can affect the quality of the picture and you may want to use different compression rates for different pictures.
• Check Delete cropped areas of pictures once you completely finished cropping your pictures. Please remember, once this is done you cannot undo it.

Target Output:

Pixels Per Inch (ppi) determines the amount of detail retained in the original picture. After compression, the picture can look different, so before saving make sure the visual quality has not been compromised by the compression process. If you want to apply any artistic effect make sure you compress the picture first.

• Choose the option that matches the end result of your project. If you are printing then choose the print quality, emailing choose E-mail, and etc…

 4. Click OK.

One of the major advantages to Office 2010 is the consistency between applications which means that compressing pictures in Word is done the same way in Outlook, Excel, and PowerPoint. Compressing the pictures can reduce the file size quickly for sending via email, saving to the server or saving space on your computer.