The PowerPoint® Blog

Imagine you’ve rotated a photo 30 degrees, using PowerPoint’s ability to rotate any shape, image or text box. It now fits the slide design better – YAY! But the image needs to now be cropped, and the cropping a rotated image is not going to allow the image to be cropped…

When you select Crop, you’ll notice that:

• The crop handles follow the image’s original orientation.
• Cropping can feel awkward and imprecise.
• It’s difficult to crop exactly what you see on the slide.

This happens because PowerPoint stores the rotation as an attribute of the image instead of creating a new, rotated image. So, let’s use Paste Special to add a new version of image, that is on the 90-degree axis (eg. straight) and crop the image!

• Select the rotated image
• Copy (CTRL + C)
• Delete the original (or hide it via selection tool)
• Use Paste Special > Picture (PNG) (or the Paste Special > PNG Quick Access Toolbar button)
• The result is the same image (now in a .PNG format) is on the slide and ready to crop!

Now when you select Crop:

• The crop handles align with the image as you see it.
• Cropping feels natural.
• Easier to make precise adjustments.

The picture hasn’t changed visually, the only thing changed is the way PowerPoint treats it.

TIP: Make this a 1-click formatting option. If you haven’t already added Paste Special – PNG to your QAT (Quick Access Toolbar), check out the on how to add this super helpful shortcut to your PowerPoint setup. This of course is if you are working in PowerPoint Windows desktop app. See the July 16, 2026 post, PowerPoint “Paste Special” Tip – Make it a QAT Button.

-Troy and the TLC Creative presentation design team

Videos are a great way to add motion and storytelling to a presentation, but what happens when you need a still image from that video? Maybe you need a thumbnail, a screenshot of a specific moment, or an image to use elsewhere in the presentation. Paste Special is the solution!

A simple copy and paste will not work, as it pastes another copy of the video – and our goal is a .png image of a specific frame of the video.

Instead, use Paste Special > PNG to quickly turn a video frame into an image.

TIP: Make this a 1-click formatting option. If you haven’t already added Paste Special – PNG to your QAT (Quick Access Toolbar), check out the on how to add this super helpful shortcut to your PowerPoint setup. This of course is if you are working in PowerPoint Windows desktop app. See the July 16, 2026 post, PowerPoint “Paste Special” Tip – Make it a QAT Button.

Let’s go through the step-by-step of creating an image from a video:

1. Select the video
2. Move the video playback slider to frame you want to add as an image – this frame will become your image
3. Go to the Video Format tab
4. In the Adjust section, click the Poster Frame dropdown
5. Select Use Current Frame. PowerPoint will now use that frame as the visual preview image for the video
6. Copy the video (CTRL+ C)
7. Use Paste Special > PNG
8. PowerPoint creates a PNG image of the selected video frame
9. Adjust the new image as needed for the slide layout (resize, crop, add effects, etc.)

Note: the inserted .png image is the size of the video. As example, if the video is very small on the slide, the inserted image will also be small. If a large image is needed, temporarily make the video larger on the slide before copying it.

This is especially useful because a single video can provide many different images. Instead of searching for separate photos, you can scrub through the video to find a useful frame, set as poster frame, copy and Paste Special as PNG. Repeat as needed for additional images. You can quickly create library of still images from existing video content.
After creating your images, remember to reset the video poster frame!

To reset the poster frame on a video:

1. Select the video
2. Go to Video Format > Poster Frame
3. In the Adjust section, click the Poster Frame dropdown
4. Select Reset (back to the beginning frame)

-Troy and the TLC Creative presentation design team

PowerPoint is a POWERFUL design tool. Why? Because it allows us to create graphics using editable objects like shapes, icons, and SVG files. And in most cases, keeping those objects editable is exactly what we want… But there are times when a finished graphic needs to become a single image.

That’s Where Paste Special > PNG Comes In

Take this 4-box quadrant for example with text set inside each shape. The goal is a rounded corner SWAT style grid accomplished with the PowerPoint shape “Single Rounded Corner Rectangle.” But when the shape is flipped vertically and horizontally to create rounded corners in all 4 quadrants, a problem arises with the text in some of the shapes ☹️. As you can see in the screen capture below, PowerPoint limits text box orientation when a shape is flipped. That means that embedded text does not work for the bottom two shapes.

Here’s what you do to work around this limitation: copy the 4 shapes removing any text inside them first (Select all > CTRL + C), delete the shapes, then Paste Special > PNG. The resulting PNG image has the 4-quadrants with the rounded corners, and as a PNG image the background around the quadrant shapes is transparent.

The downside is, since it’s one large image, these PowerPoint shapes are not editable. That means that for this example, additional text boxes need to be added and placed on top of the image.

TIP: Make this a 1-click formatting option. If you haven’t already added Paste Special – PNG to your QAT (Quick Access Toolbar), check out the on how to add this super helpful shortcut to your PowerPoint setup. This of course is if you are working in the PowerPoint Windows desktop app. See the July 16, 2026 post, PowerPoint “Paste Special” Tip – Make it a QAT Button.

-Troy and the TLC Creative presentation design team

Sometimes you know an image is just huge and needs to be optimized. Using paste-special is a great option to instantly create an optimized version of an image.
Presentations can quickly become bloated with large image files, even when the images appear small on the slide. One common reason is that PowerPoint stores the original image dimensions and resolution – not just the size you see on the slide. This means a small-looking image may contain a much larger image file behind the scenes.

Using Paste Special as PNG, you can create a new optimized version of an image that matches the actual size on the slide. Copying and pasting as a PNG image will optimize the image dimensions and remove unnecessary resolution + data which results in a smaller file size.

The TLC Creative presentation design team uses the Paste Special PNG shortcut on the Quick Access Toolbar (covered in our previous post) to quickly optimize individual images.
Here’s how:

1. Select the image you want to optimize
2. Copy the image (CTRL+C)
3. Delete the original image (trust us, it’s okay to delete it)
4. Use Paste Special > Picture (PNG)
5. The new PNG image added to the slide is created based on the original image, but at the size it was copied at, creating an optimized exactly to the display size image!

Here is an example of the original image, that is small on the slide, but really a massive file size in the PowerPoint file:

Here is the Paste Special PNG version of the image – what you see is the file size in the PowerPoint file:

Now when the image is reset, its no longer the unnecessarily large image – which results in a smaller file size for the presentation:

For entire presentations with many images, PowerPoint’s build in Compress Pictures feature can also help (but the TLC Creative design team trusts NXPowerlite for optimizing full presentations vs. PowerPoint’s built in option). But, when you need more control over individual images, PowerPoint’s Paste Special is a built-in option that works fast and really great, giving you a targeted way to optimize specific problem images!

-Troy and the TLC Creative presentation design team

Need an image of  a slide, on your slide? We do – often! Here is a quick PowerPoint trick that will create a full-size image of any slide in just a couple of clicks.

This is built into PowerPoint, if you know about using Paste Special to convert a slide into a PNG or JPEG instantly.

Here’s how to do it:

1. In the thumbnail pane on the left side of PowerPoint, select the slide to convert to an image and right-click the thumbnail
2. Choose COPY or press CTRL + C

3. Go to HOME tab
4. Click the PASTE drop-down

5. Select PASTE SPECIAL

6. Choose an image format and click OK

That’s it! PowerPoint creates a full-resolution image of the entire slide, which is inserted as a single picture. Unlike the original slide, the image can’t be edited object by object, but it can be resized, cropped, rotated, or have picture formatting applied (inserted here slightly smaller than the slide to see it is an image of the original slide, on a new slide, all created in just a few clicks!).

TIP: Make this a 1-click formatting option. If you haven’t already added Paste Special – PNG to your QAT (Quick Access Toolbar), check out the on how to add this super helpful shortcut to your PowerPoint setup. This of course is if you are working in PowerPoint Windows desktop app. See the July 16, 2026 post, PowerPoint “Paste Special” Tip – Make it a QAT Button.

-Troy and the TLC Creative presentation design team