Text appearing on slides is useful for summarizing the words of the speaker and focusing the attention of the audience on what is being said and consequently cannot support a presentation. An image of, for example, a component within a project, a screen shot of a running application, a graph showing a trend in profitability, or a flow diagram will more easily impress an idea on the audience than any number of words. A useful rule of thumb from Glenn Gulak is to never, without good reason, have more than two consecutive slides without images. [Ksch 00]

Invariably, most images will be associated with text of some form. If there are multiple images on a slide, it should be easily apparent which text is associated with which image. Images should read from left-to-right and then top-to-bottom in terms of the order in which they should be processed.

Unfortunately, while a good image can significantly help a technical presentation and focus the audience, a poorly placed image will also immediately capture the attention of the audience and they will focus the negative characteristics. The term amateur will quickly flash across the minds of a number of audience members. Here we will describe the different image formats and problems associated with each.

In this section, we will look at:

• Image types,
• Common errors,
• Photographs,
• Graphics,
• Hybrid Graphic-Photographs, and
• Clip Art.