This from Chantal, a friend and regular patron of PowerPoint Live…
“I am developing a presentation for a customer’s yearly meeting. Room specs: 120 feet long (around 700 people), maximum image width of 26 feet. My big worry is about image resolution. We know PPT is using a 96 dpi value but will my image resolution be a factor if the final projecting width is indeed 26 feet?”
What would you have told her? I didn’t exactly mince words in my reply:
“Dots per inch is bull—-!”
There is simply no such thing when working with screen content. There is no such thing as a dot and there is no such thing as an inch. How would you measure the inch — across the display of your 15-inch notebook monitor or across the width of a 26-foot screen? You see what I mean? You cannot make sense of an inch in a screen projection, so don’t even try.
You will need a projector bright enough to pump out an image that will be sprayed so wide, and if you are not confident that it will be able to project well enough across 26 feet, make sure you create a color scheme with plenty of contrast. If you can test it in the venue beforehand, always a plus!
But for the rest of your PowerPoint lifetime, pretend you never heard of dots or inches. I refer you to the following article for details:
http://www.betterppt.com/editorial-archive/archive/07mar.htm