PowerPoint presentation (with images in it) when exported to PDF gives a very blurry and bad quality output

Question

I have been struggling for a while now. I am creating my design portfolio in a 16:9 screen ratio. My designs (which I want to put in the PPT file) are high quality images. Also, there are several hyperlinks in the PPT file that should go in to the exported PDF document.

However, on exporting this PPT file to PDF, all images inside the document look extremely bad, blur and pixelated.

My PowerPoint version: PowerPoint Office 2019.

OS in my computer: Microsoft Windows 10.

I tried the following widely available methods to produce high quality PDFs with high quality images from PPT:

Method 1:

File>Options>Advanced>Image Size and Quality and checking Do not compress images in file. Set Default Resolution to High fidelity.

Result: No improvement in the PDF and image quality.

Method 2:

Microsoft Print to PDF

Result: Minor improvement. But all links/ hyperlinks within the document gone away. Also, document size and dimensions also changed entirely, cutting-off a lot content, and creating unnecessary white margins/spaces.

Method 3:

"AutomaticPictureCompressionDefault" in Registry Editor.

Result: No improvement in the PDF and image quality.

Can you please share a sure-shot way to create high quality PDFs with high quality images in it via PowerPoint? Is it even possible to achieve such PDF (with images inside it) with PowerPoint?

P.S.: I don't have the premium Adobe Acrobat Pro software. I want to achieve my desired results via PowerPoint only.

I am trying to create/ export high quality PDF document from PowerPoint while maintaining the the high quality of images.