A common type of animation in videos is a very slow zoom in or out — or a pan — of an image. In this post, I’ll show you how to do this in PowerPoint.
First, watch the video.
Insert your image
Insert an image that covers your entire slide. If you’ll have text on the slide, right-click and choose Send to Back. Add the text and, of course, make sure that it’s legible over the image.
Add the animation
Two types of animation are most suited for this effect:
- Grow/Shrink–either to grow or to shrink
- Motion Path
To add a Grow/Shrink animation, follow these steps:
- Select the image.
- On the Animations tab, choose Add Animation.
- In the Emphasis section, choose Grow/Shrink.
- To make adjustments to the animation, click the Animation Pane button on the ribbon to open the Animation Pane.
- In the Animation Pane, click the down arrow next to the animation and choose Effect Options. You’ll see the Grow/Shrink dialog box as you see on the right.
- The default size is 150%, but it’s too much for this effect. Click the Size down arrow and in the Custom text box, type 125% and press Enter. For a slow shrink, try 80%. Important: Your image should be larger than the slide if you want to shrink it. You can try other numbers, of course. Click OK.
In the Duration box on the ribbon, increase the duration. I used 4-5 seconds mostly. You can also add a small delay if you want. Here’s one of the settings I used, which is a duration of 5 seconds and a delay of 0.25 seconds.
- Go into Slide Sh0w view and look at the effect. Make adjustments if you want. For example, if you’re shrinking an image, make sure its edges don’t show at the end of the animation.
To add a motion path animation, follow these steps:
- Select the image.
- On the Animations tab, choose Add Animation.
- In the Motion Paths section (near the bottom), choose Lines.
- In the Effect Options section of the ribbon, choose Left or Right (or whichever direction you want).
- To change the distance of the path, click the motion path line, then the red (stop) circle and drag it — in most cases, you want to drag it closer to the green circle to reduce the distance.
- In the Animation Pane, click the down arrow next to the animation and choose Effect Options. Here, you can change the Smooth Start and Smooth End timing to 0, which eliminates the acceleration and deceleration effect. Click OK.
- In the Duration box on the ribbon, increase the duration. I used 4-5 seconds mostly. You can also add a small delay if you want.
- Go into Slide Show view and look at the effect. Make adjustments if you want. Make sure the image’s edges don’t show at the end of the animation.
Add a transition
To add to the cinematic effect, you may want to add a transition. I used the Fly Through transition, but you can use any transition that you want and even use several. You can change the duration of the transition as well.
If the presentation will be played unattended or if you will create a video, you want to add slide timings. On the Transitions tab, under Advance Slide, check the After checkbox and use the up arrow to increase the number of seconds you want each slide to show.
Export to video
If you want, you can export the presentation to a video. Choose File, Export, Create a Video. You can probably keep the default settings, so just click Create Video and wait for the process to complete. The video will be in the same folder as the presentation file.
Get more advanced techniques
Recently in my Power Pointers Quarter Hour program, I taught a similar but more advanced technique that allows you to create this type of cinematic effect with images that don’t cover the entire slide. If you like techniques like this, you’ll love Power Pointers Quarter Hour.
Do you like this effect? How would you change the example video–would you use different settings? Leave a comment and please share with your colleagues using the social media buttons.
Great post, Ellen. I will definitely try that feature soon. Really appreciate your expertise and the succinct and easy-to-understand/follow way that you do it.
For these, be sure to have more contrast between the text and background than usual, since a moving background is more distracting. A few of the examples in the video shows how hard it can be to read on a moving background. Consider glows, shadows, or outlines to separate the text from background.
Yes, I agree, although the movement is slow. This type of slide shouldn’t have much text on it. You can put a semi-transparent rectangle between the text and the image.
Thank you for this, Ellen. It’s very helpful — I’ve never thought of having the pictures grow or shrink as being video, but it really does give the effect of video, and holds your interest longer.
Gina, PowerPoint’s animation is pretty sophisticated and when you export to video, you can do some nice stuff! This technique is pretty easy, so enjoy!
Thank you very much for sharing this!
very good thank you
Very nice, thx!
Such a great documentation for bloggers,
Thank you for sharing your expertise. Do you know of a technique to make a slide appear very slowly from darkness to full exposure? I have a very powerful image as the last climatic slide of a presentation and is timed to appear toward the end of a music clip. I’m familiar with ‘shrink/grow’ but I want the image to appear out of darkness instead of just a growth. Is that possible? I would appreciate any suggestions!
Ann, I’d recommend putting a black rectangle on top of the image, covering the entire slide and using an exit Fade. Time it to happen quite slowly, perhaps 5-8 seconds. That will let the image beneath it appear gradually. If you have Office 365, you can use the Morph transition. The first slide will have a solid black rectangle on it. Duplicate that slide and make the rectangle 100% transparent. Add the Morph transition to the last slide and set the timing of the transition to 5-8 seconds or so. It’s really the same look as the first technique. I… Read more »
Thank you! I experimented with different methods and I now have the stunning effect I was hoping for.
can we do this in photoshop ?
Great post, Ellen. I will definitely try that feature soon.