Add slow-zoom to PowerPoint images

Many documentary films are in fact a series of still images with a very slow zoom effect applied to them. The brain does not really notice that it is not looking at live video footage. The example below is my attempt to take you to the start of a story in the streets of Paris.

So how do you create these?

Take an image and stretch it bigger than the PowerPoint canvas
Select the object and pick an emphasis animation: either grow/shrink, or a motion path
Set the effect option to very slow

In this case I used a “grow/shrink” with a 130% magnitude over 5 seconds.

Thank you Eole Wind for this beautiful image.

5 comments

Ellen Finkelstein2010-12-17 03:48:23

Very nice! What would you do to blend this technique for several photos ones after another? I tried a fade transition, but there was a pause before the zoom started.

Jan Schultink2010-12-16 15:37:55

Thank you for stopping by

Jim2010-12-16 20:31:38

I've sometimes have trouble with this sort of movement being jerky. I think it is because an image alreayd has a lot of not only pixels, but a lot of colors of pixels. And then when you move them, it requires a huge amount of CBP capacity. A really powerful computer can handle it, but the standard army issue computer most employees get can't.

It seems to be less of a problem with simpler graphics with only a few dozen colors rather than a photograph with thousands of colors.

And it seems to work better with a fast zoom because the eye doesn't detect the jerkiness. But that doesn't fit the point of this blog post.

Éole2010-12-16 15:27:05

Hello,

Nice post, thank you for linking to my photo.

Regards,

--
Éole

Jan Schultink2010-12-19 05:43:02

I have not experimented with this Ellen. There is something like "delayed start" somewhere in the animation options, maybe that causes the pause? Don't know.