The Photopia Blog
Tips, tutorials & inspiration for making slideshows
AUGUST 5, By Photopia
Simple Zoom and Pan
Simple zooms and pans are essential animations commonly used in slideshows. Popularized by Ken Burns, these techniques helped bring his documentary photographs to life.
Continue reading to learn the steps to create a basic zoom or pan effect in Photopia.
To start, add a landscaped image to a blank slide.
If your image doesn’t match the video preview size, consider resizing it to fill the whole screen to avoid black edges. To do this, select the layer in the Layers list and choose Fill Frame from the Scaling drop-down menu.
To create an animation, select the Animations tab.
You’ll see two keyframe timelines: one below the video preview and another above the layer attributes. You can use either timeline; choose the one that works best for you.
Before we start using keyframes, let’s change the animation preview. The default setting is a Single Preview window, which is what your audience will see. There are options for single, dual, and triple preview modes in the upper left corner above the preview window.
Switching to Dual Preview will help visualize the Start and End of your animation. The left window shows the Start of your animation, and the right window shows the End. When a layer has only two keyframes, the left window displays the first keyframe, and the right window displays the second keyframe, showing the Start and End of your animation.
We’re going to start our Zoom with our image at 100%, or full screen.
To lock this scale in at the beginning of the slide, select the first keyframe (or click in the left preview window) and check the box next to Zoom.
Then, select the second keyframe (or click in the right preview window) and increase the Zoom value using either your mouse wheel in the right preview window or using the Zoom slider or number boxes.
That’s it! Click the Play Slide button to watch your slide and see the animation.
In our example, we want to zoom in on the Louvre, which ends up zooming partly out of frame at the top and left sides of the screen. To zoom in on a specific part of an image, you need to set keyframes for both the Zoom and the Position.
Select Keyframe 1 and check the Position box.
Then, select Keyframe 2 and drag the image in the preview window to the desired zoom-in position. You’ll see a line showing the image’s movement path. Preview your animation using the Play Slide button.
The speed of your animation is determined by the time between keyframes and the difference in their values. To change the speed, adjust the time between the keyframes (the slide and transition times) or the attribute values.
Next, we’ll create a simple pan. Add another landscaped image to a new blank slide and set the scaling to Fill Frame.
To pan an image without seeing black edges, it must be larger than your screen. Do not adjust the zoom in the Animations tab, as this will create a zoom animation, and we want to keep the scale or zoom consistent throughout the slide. Make your image larger in the Adjustments tab.
Zoom your image using your mouse wheel in the preview window or by adjusting the Zoom numbers. To see the parts of your image that are outside of the video canvas, use the zoom slider located at the top right of the preview window. To reset to full screen, click the Reset Canvas button.
Once your image is larger than the preview, you’re ready to animate the position settings.
Select the Animations tab, select the first keyframe, and move your image. This will automatically check the Position attribute.
Next, select the second keyframe and move your image to the other side.
To keep your image aligned vertically while moving it side to side, hold the Shift key and click and drag the layer. You can also enter the same number in the Vertical Position box for both keyframes. The same applies when moving the image up or down: hold the Shift key while dragging, or enter the same number in the Horizontal Position box.
With just a few simple steps, you can create stunning zoom and pan effects on your images in Photopia!
