Save Slides as Image Files

This is one of those tips that you may not use all the time, but it can come in really handy when the need arises.  A colleague shared this tip with me and I've already thought of a few ways I might use it!

There are a variety of reasons you might want to save some, or all, of the slides from a PowerPoint or Google Slides Presentation as image files.  You can create a video with a song or with narration using iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, or Adobe Premiere Pro using your slide images.  You can easily email out single slides that students have created for parents to see.  Maybe you need to post pictures of single slides on a website or as work examples, etc.

Now that we know it is a handy trick, let's talk about how it's done.

First - using Microsoft PowerPoint:

Open your slide show, and then click the Office Button (menu button).  Choose "Save As", and then "Other Formats".

A box will pop up asking where you'd like to save.  Chose the location where you'd like to save your files and then change the "Save as type" option to be the image file of your choice - JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, etc.  If you have no idea what the differences are - just choose JPEG.  

Once you click "Save", it will prompt you to see if you would like to save just the current slide or all of the slides as images.  You can make your choice. 

 If you choose "Every Slide" it will save all of the files in a folder and confirm the location of that folder.

If you open up the folder, you will see all of your slides saved as individual image files.  

You can now do whatever you wish with your files like import them into a video creation app or email out individual slides to specific people.  

This process is a little different in Google Slides.

At the time of this post, Google Slides only allows you to save one slide at a time.  You can't save the whole show all at once like you can in PowerPoint.  If you want to save every slide, I suggest you download the file as a PowerPoint document, open it in PowerPoint, and complete the process I shared with you above.  If you just need a few of the slides, or you don't have access to the PowerPoint program, you can follow the directions below.  

Open up your Google Slides Presentation.  Click on "File" and choose "Download as".  You can then pick PNG, JPEG, or SVG.  Again, if you aren't sure what those all are, just choose JPEG.  

Once you click on the file type you want, it will automatically download your file.  Chances are downloads will automatically go into your "Downloads" folder unless you have changed the default location for downloads.

I had my students create a slide in a shared Google Slides Presentation for their parents that I set in a revolving slideshow on our Open House night.  I will be converting that slideshow into a PowerPoint, saving all the slides as JPEG images, and emailing them out individually to parents in case they missed it at the event.  This process will make that very easy.  

I hope this tip was helpful for you!  Stop in again soon for more handy tech tips!