Setting up your scientific research poster
Page
Setup
Our templates are named for the size poster they will give you. Since PowerPoint® will not allow a page size larger than 56", larger posters are set up as half size. We double the size with our printer driver. If you are setting up a poster from scratch, set it up as actual size, or half size if it will be larger than 56".
We can print your poster at any proportional size to the original. For instance, if your original is 18x24", we can print it at 36x48", 48x64", etc. Setup custom page sizes in PowerPoint® under: file - page setup - drop the menu down to custom and put in your size.
How to bring things in from Microsoft ® Excel® and Word®
Excel- select your chart, hit edit-copy, and then edit-paste into PowerPoint®. The chart can then be stretched to fit as required. If you need to edit parts of the chart, it can be ungrouped.
Beware! PowerPoint® doesn't know what fonts were used in imported objects. It's best to stick with the Symbol font for Greek characters, since we always keep Symbol loaded on our machines. If you use an unusual type font in your chart, you need to send us the font so we can load it on our system before we run your poster.
Word - select the text to be brought into PowerPoint®, hit edit-copy, create a text block in PowerPoint® and edit-paste the text into the text block. This text is editable. Charts and tables that come in funny, or look bad when you try to resize them, can often be fixed by re-pasting them using paste special and choosing enhanced metafile.
Prism® and other statistical programs
Save your chart or table as a high resolution jpg, then do insert-picture-from file. Do not save as a png file, as PowerPoint® does not handle them well.
Photos
Scanned in photos should be 72-100 dpi in their final size. This is about 2-4 mb of uncompressed .tif per square foot of final size. If, for example, you are scanning a 3"X5" photo that will be 6"X10" on your poster, scan at 200 dpi.
A word about digital photographs
The standard 480x640 pixel digital picture should not be any larger than about 8x10" on your poster. Megapixel digital pictures can go quite a bit larger, the rule of thumb is we like to see them at 72 dpi in the actual size. To have an image that's 10x20 and 72 dpi, we need 720x1440 pixels. If it's 700x1400, you won't notice a difference, but if it's 200x400, it will be awful! Pictures of insufficient density are the biggest problem we face.
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