I've used PowerPoint 2007 for many years. In particular I actually have used it a lot for messing around with images and combining images together using the group and save as image function. 2007 was an absolute pleasure to use. If I had two large images that I wanted to group into a larger image, I could paste them in, then click and drag one of them until I had it lined up over top of the other one exactly where I wanted it. A cool feature of 2007 is that when you drag an image, it makes the one you are dragging semi-transparent so that you can see what is under it and line them up perfectly. For some reason this feature is completely gone in PowerPoint 2013. Why? Is there a way to get that back? I just want my picture to be semi-transparent when I'm moving it. Man I loved that feature.

Additionally, something that I just can't seem to figure out is that in 2007 if you paste or insert a very high resolution image, the image would paste at the original resolution into PowerPoint and you would have to resize or crop it down to fit to the slide. The benefit of this is that you maintain the original resolution while you are manipulating and editing the slide. I liked that. Now in 2013, it seems as though PowerPoint is automatically resizing and compressing my images down to the resolution and size of the slide when I paste them. And I can't find any way to prevent it from doing so. If I want to crop down my original high resolution image to just a small section, the end resolution is crap and it's all blurry. Is there any way to fix this without having to use a separate external image program? Thanks!!

You're correct on both counts. Nothing to be done about the first.

A registry hack can fix the latter.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\

Create a new DWord AutomaticPictureCompressionDefault and set it to 0 (ie OFF)

Obviously don't go there if you do not know what you are doing.

__________________
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP 2007-2023
Free Advanced PowerPoint Tips and Tutorials

To make picture semi-transparent in PowerPoint 2013 try this..
Select the picture you want, Then press CTRL+Left Mouse Button and move it - This of course will copy the picture - so after you put the picture were you want leave CTRL Button first, Then the left button of the mouse.

That's a very cool trick Hani.

__________________
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP 2007-2023
Free Advanced PowerPoint Tips and Tutorials