Seems like this may be an issue with how you're exporting from PowerPoint. PowerPoint is saving the images as viewed, not in actuality, so when you import to Paint.NET, it's smaller and worse quality, and when you put it back in to PowerPoint, it's worse than the original, as it's a smaller image. To prove this, export a PNG and then load it right back in to PowerPoint without using Paint.NET. You should still see that quality difference.