The three simplest methods are to save your logo as either a JPEG, GIF or PNG file. GIF and PNG files can be saved without a background colour, but a GIF file is limited to only 256 colours, so logos with gradients or soft shadows may appear with bands rather than smooth gradients or shadows.

JPEG files do not have such a low limit on the number of colours they can contain, hence why they are the format of choice for photographs, but JPEGs cannot be saved with a transparent background.

Recent versions of PowerPoint, 2000 and newer, have a picture editing tool to allow you to set a single colour in an image to be transparent, so you can use this tool to remove the background colour of your logo. However it does not always produce satisfactory results with complex logos and you should also be aware that if the selected colour appears as part of your logo’s design it will be made transparent along with the background.

A little used format is WMF (Windows Meta File), unlike JPEG, GIF and PNG which are raster files (i.e. the files contain information about individual pixels), WMF is a vector file (stores information about objects e.g. circles, squares etc). When it comes to logos the WMF file three big advantages over the other formats:

1. Logos imported into PowerPoint as WMF can be resized without any loss in quality.
2. They have transparent backgrounds.
3. WMF files tend to be smaller than JPEG and PNG files.

Saving your logo as a Windows Meta File (WMF)

You cannot convert a JPEG, GIF or PNG into a WMF file, so you will need to go back to the original source file of your logo, provided that it was created in a package such as Adobe Illustrator or Freehand, you or your designer should be able to resave your logo as a Windows Meta File.

When saving your logo as a Windows Meta File, make sure you use the option to “save text as curves”, this will avoid any problems with non-standard system fonts that were used as part of your logo’s design.

Give it ago, having your logo in PowerPoint as a Windows Meta File (WMF) makes it much easier to use and gives you more flexibility when designing your presentations.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 11:43 am and is filed under PowerPoint Tips & FAQs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.