Slow image animation for a cinematic look

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:

1. Select the image.
2. On the Animations tab, choose Add Animation.
3. In the Emphasis section, choose Grow/Shrink.
4. To make adjustments to the animation, click the Animation Pane button on the ribbon to open the Animation Pane.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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:

1. Select the image.
2. On the Animations tab, choose Add Animation.
3. In the Motion Paths section (near the bottom), choose Lines.
4. In the Effect Options section of the ribbon, choose Left or Right (or whichever direction you want).
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.

Read more about it here.

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.