PowerPoint slide size in pixels: 16:9 at 1920 x 1080

Inches in the app, pixels on the screen

Microsoft's help page lists the PowerPoint widescreen slide at 13.333 by 7.5 inches, 33.867 by 19.05 centimetres, and the standard slide at 10 by 7.5 inches. Those are layout units, not pixels. When a slide is shown full screen, it is rendered at the display's resolution: on a 1920 by 1080 projector the slide fills 1920 by 1080 pixels, and on a 4K screen 3840 by 2160. Google Slides offers Widescreen 16:9, Widescreen 16:10 and Standard 4:3, and lets a custom size be typed in inches, centimetres, points or pixels.

Which pixel size to choose

For images placed on slides, size them for the largest screen the deck will meet. A full width photo on a 16:9 slide needs 1920 pixels across for full HD and 3840 for a 4K display; smaller images placed on part of a slide need proportionally fewer. When exporting slides as images for social media or a website, 1920 by 1080 is the common choice, and 1280 by 720 keeps files light. Designing a slide in a separate tool, start at 1920 by 1080 so text sizes match what presenters expect.

16:9 against other screens

Most laptops, monitors and projectors sold today are 16:9 or the slightly taller 16:10, so a 16:9 deck fills them with little or no black bar. On a 16:10 MacBook screen a 16:9 slide shows thin bars at top and bottom. An older 4:3 projector shows a 16:9 slide letterboxed, with bars above and below. Phones held sideways are wider than 16:9, so a deck shared as a video or a link shows bars at the sides there.

Common mistakes

The first is pasting low resolution screenshots, often 800 pixels wide, onto a slide that will be shown on a 4K screen. The second is mixing 4:3 images into a 16:9 deck without cropping, leaving odd white bands. The third is changing the slide size halfway through a deck, which rescales or crops every slide. The fourth is exporting a deck as images at 960 by 540 for a website hero, where it looks soft beside sharp text.

Slide size in the presentation generator

Every deck the presentation generator makes is 16:9 on a 1920 by 1080 canvas, so this is a size the product makes directly. Describe the deck and the slides come back at that size. PDF exports and the plain PowerPoint export are built from screenshots at twice the canvas, 3840 by 2160 pixels per slide, and the PowerPoint file uses the 13.333 by 7.5 inch widescreen layout; PDF text in those exports is not selectable. The blank PNG above is 1920 by 1080, a slide sized canvas for other tools.

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