The Photopia Blog
Tips, tutorials & inspiration for making slideshows
JUNE 10, By Photopia
What is Easing Mode?
If you’ve ever worked with keyframes in the animations tab, you’ve probably seen the term Easing Mode within the Position option. But what exactly is it?
Learn more in today’s blog.
What is Easing?
Motion easing controls how an animation moves between two keyframes (the start and end points of an animation). Instead of the motion happening at a constant speed, easing allows the movement to feel more natural and smooth.
Think of it like this:
- A car that starts and stops suddenly is similar to linear easing.
- A car that gradually speeds up and slowly comes to a stop is similar to smooth easing.
Types of Easing Modes
Easing can be applied to any setting in the Animation tab. While it’s easiest to think about easing in terms of position or scale, you can apply easing modes to any animated setting, including image adjustments, outlines, and even shadows.
The four most commonly used easing modes are displayed at the top of the Easing window, but there are actually over 40 options available. Each easing mode is represented by a graph that illustrates how it works. The lower left corner represents the starting keyframe, and the upper right represents the ending keyframe. The curve in the middle displays how the chosen easing affects the applied setting.
First, let’s go over the four most commonly used easing modes:
- Linear: The motion begins and ends at a constant speed without easing. This can feel mechanical or abrupt; however, when applied to animations with only two keyframes, this mode will provide consistent motion.
- Smooth: The animation begins slowly and ends slowly, resulting in a smooth transition between keyframes. This mode works best when your audience can see the layer both before and after it is animated.
- Accelerate: Starts slow and speeds up toward the end.
- Decelerate: Starts fast and slows down at the end.
Clicking the More Options button shows additional Easing modes that vary from the basic four. Some of these modes can make creating animations quick and easy with just a single click.
- Back Out: This mode causes the setting value to overshoot the final value slightly before settling back to the entered value. An example of this mode is to have your image pan slightly past the last keyframe’s position value, then smoothly return to its final position.
- Bounce: This mode makes the layer bounce before settling, adding a playful touch. This can be added to create a slight bounce as your layer bounces into its last keyframe.
Using Motion Easing in Photopia
In Photopia, motion easing is applied to the keyframe where the motion starts, which isn’t always the first keyframe on your timeline.
In this example, we have a layer that has four keyframes. The image sits still for Keyframes 1 and 2, moves between 2 and 3, then sits still again between 3 and 4.
The motion happens between Keyframes 2 and 3, so Keyframe 2 is where you apply motion easing.
How to Add Motion Easing:
- Go to the Animations Tab.
- Select the Keyframe where the animation begins
- Click the triangle next to the property you’re animating (if you are animating Position, click the Select button). This can be multiple properties in a single keyframe, such as Zoom and Rotate.
- Choose a Motion Easing type by selecting a graph that represents the motion style you want.
For properties like Zoom, which have two values (X and Y), you’ll need to apply easing to both values separately.
Why Use Motion Easing?
Easing adds polish and professionalism to your animations. It makes movements feel more natural and helps guide your viewer’s attention in a smooth, visually pleasing way.
