Best way to show pictures during my presentation on Zoom?

August 6, 2023 10:56 AM

I'm going to do a presentation on Zoom for the first time. I'm going to show some pictures and talk about them. How do I do this? The pictures can be .jpg 's or whatever they need to be. I'm on a Lenovo Thinkpad laptop. Should the pictures be on my Desktop? I'm not an organizer or anything. "Structurally" I'm just a participant. Or do I have to give over my screen to the person whose Zoom account is running this series of discussions? [I Know Nothing]
posted by DMelanogaster to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

There might well be a better way to do this, but I would make a PowerPoint presentation and make a slide show with one picture on each slide.

Then, you can share your screen. (Make sure the host has it in their settings that you can share your screen with the group).

Then, you can present your PowerPoint.
posted by Jeanne at 11:10 AM on August 6, 2023 [10 favorites]

If you are a participant, you can share your screen but the organizer of the meeting must enable this feature. So reach out to whoever is the host and make sure they do this.: here are those instructions.

In some cases, the host may not want to allow participants this control, because it means any participant could do this and theoretically anarchy and chaos could result. If it's a small presentation where all the participants are known, this is the easiest.

If the host is cautious, another option is to make you a co-host, allowing you to share your screen but noone else.

In either scenario, once you are sharing your screen, you have the option to share your entire desktop or a specific application. Personally I just share my entire desktop and yes, you should put all the images you want to share in one single folder (on the desktop is fine), and then use the default image program on Windows to open them as needed. Consider renaming them 01, 02, 03, 04, etc. to make your life easier when presenting.

Hope this helps!
posted by jeremias at 11:10 AM on August 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Personally I just use powerpoint and create a slide show, but that's not totally necessary if you just have pictures and don't want any text or graphics involved.

If I just had a bunch of pictures and was going to flip through them as a presentation, I'd just have all the pictures in one folder somewhere - on the desktop is fine, but it could be anywhere as long as you can get to it. My default windows picture viewer functions like a slide show viewer where there's an arrow on either side of the main picture that will go to the next or previous picture in the folder, depending on if you click on the left or right side. So the presentation would be: open the folder, open the first picture, advance as necessary.

You should have the option to share your screen as a participant in a Zoom call; anyone sharing their screen will have to stop doing so to allow you to share yours. The meeting controls change a bit when you're screensharing - you may want to have a practice call with someone so you can see what that looks like.
posted by LionIndex at 11:10 AM on August 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

There might be good suggestions that others have about how windows can handle photos, but personally, what I would do:

1. Find out how the rest of the Zoom event is structured. Is there more presentation happening around what you're talking about? Will there be slides? If so, is it a powerpoint or a google slides presentation?
2. If so, I'd put the photos into the same kind of slide deck (powerpoint or google slides) and send them to the organizer to include in the right spot in their presentation. Or, if you are unfamiliar with doing this yourself, send the photos to your organizer with notes about the order they should be in to add them for you.
3. During the presentation then, they can just advance the slides for you on your cue when you get to the point in the presentation.

The advantage of that method is that you don't need to figure out how to manage sharing your screen and opening and closing photos when you haven't had experience with doing so. Also, you don't need to worry about whether the photos will show too big, sideways, or any of the other possible headaches that can come up from opening the files themselves live. And anything you can do to reduce the overhead with the photos makes more space for your presenting to shine!
posted by past unusual at 11:13 AM on August 6, 2023

I'm an academic and have done (and facilitated) this One Million Times.

I'd suggest that your best bet is to put your pictures into a "set of slides": either PowerPoint, Keynote, or a multi-page pdf in "landscape" orientation, with one picture per slide. While offline, learn how to open the slides file and make it full-screen on your laptop, and how to "page forward" to the next slide (usually the space bar or the right-arrow key will do this). To get out of full-screen, usually you press the 'esc' (escape) key.

During the Zoom meeting, the organizer (or 'Host' in Zoom language) can either give you permission to share your screen (via a Zoom setting) or make you a 'co-host' so that you can share your screen. Then during the meeting, within Zoom you click on the screen-sharing control at the bottom of the window, select which thing you want to share (share your entire laptop screen; it's probably best to already have the slides open but not full-screen yet), and then put your slides in full-screen. If you share your entire laptop screen, other participants will be able to see your mouse cursor too, in case you need to use it to indicate particular features of the pictures.

Other participants will still be able to see the video of your face while you share your screen, though you will not be able to see yourself while you are screen-sharing.

It is good to have a chance to practice this in advance. Can you ask the organizer for a 10-minute trial session some time in advance of your presentation? Failing that, having a friend run a Zoom session that you can join and practice sharing your screen (etc.) would be a good way to get the hang of it.
posted by heatherlogan at 11:16 AM on August 6, 2023 [9 favorites]

Oh, and close (or "minimize") any other applications or file windows that you usually have running on your laptop desktop. That way you won't have to worry about other viewers getting a glimpse of your email or Firefox tabs or Discord chats or whatever when you share your screen.
posted by heatherlogan at 11:26 AM on August 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

If you talk with the organizer and it looks like screen sharing is the way to go, note that you can test it out on your own to see how it work. Just start your own zoom meeting, look for the Share Screen button, and try out the different options. (Personally I prefer sharing a specific window over sharing my desktop - that way I don't have to think about whether there's anything open that I don't want the world to see, whether any notifications are going to pop up, etc.)

If you have a friend with zoom, or even just a second device with zoom installed, you can also try out scenarios like cohosting and so on.
posted by trig at 1:30 PM on August 6, 2023

I concur that the default option on a PC is to create a slideshow using Microsoft PowerPoint or Google slides. It’s possible to create a basic slideshow “for free” with either of these options.

However, it’s certainly worth having a discussion with the meeting organizer. I would make sure you let the organizer know that you haven’t presented virtually before (on Zoom or on another platform). Get her input on what method would be best for this meeting. If she volunteers to have you send her the file(s) and she take care of the screen share … I would recommend taking her up on her offer. It will be significantly easier* for you, and not that much additional work for her. Regardless of who is doing the screen sharing, it’s a good idea to do a “dress rehearsal” with someone who can confirm your audio / video are working well on Zoom. Practice screen sharing if necessary.

*Most people find it at least a bit disorientating that presenter view may sometimes look different than the the typical views available to participants. And there’s no need to panic or for guilty about this, but Zoom has a learning curve. Covid forced many people to figure out Zoom.
posted by oceano at 4:29 PM on August 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm going to disagree with whoever said 'share your whole screen', because you risk sharing your app notifications, which can include chat messages and email titles. Yes, you can try and close all your other apps, but it only takes one missed one. Share only the app you need (with only your one document open), then full screen it; that's typically the best experience.

Also, if you usually have two monitors set up, turn one off for the duration. If you have a laptop and you use its inbuilt screen at the same time as an external monitor, either close the laptop or unplug the monitor. If you don't, Zoom might share the wrong screen at some point. PowerPoint is notorious for this, because it uses both screens when in presentation mode; we've all sat through the five minute shenanigans so we see the deck and not the presenter view.

Getting the organiser to share is absolutely your best option if they will do that for you.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 6:15 PM on August 6, 2023 [3 favorites]