Focused Zoom effect in PowerPoint

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Learn to create a focused zoom for photos in PowerPoint. Follow our simple step by step instructions to get more out of your graphics in business presentations.

Here is the focused zoom effect in PowerPoint you will learn today:

You can use the effect to focus on…

A certain part of a map
Certain steps in a process
A certain person in a group photo etc.

Let us see how to achieve the effect in a step-by-step way…

Step 1: Decide the part you want to focus on

The first step after sticking a picture on your slide is to decide the area you want to focus on. Draw a circle around the area. To make it easier to identify the outline, remove the shape's fill and color it white.

In the Custom Animation Pane add an entrance animation called ‘Wheel’ to the white circle. In the animation effect setting, change the number of spokes to 1. This will be the first part of the animation we want to create.

Step 2: Make a copy of the part you want to focus on

The main idea in this step is to make a copy of the flower and place it right on top of the flower picture in the background. For this, make a copy of the photo. Using the ‘crop’ tool crop the photo till the four sides touch the edge of the white circle.

We don’t want this cropped image to be a square. We want it to be a circle. For this, we need to make a copy of the white circle, remove the animation and fill it with the picture of the flower.

So, first ‘copy’ the cropped photo. By doing this, the piece is stored in the clipboard.

Select the copied white circle and right click to go to the ‘Format shape’ dialog box. Go to Fill -> Picture or texture fill -> Clipboard. This fills the shape with the cropped photo. Remove the outline.

Increase the transparency of the circular flower image to position it in the right place on top of the background picture. Transparency should be restored to 0%.

Now, we have a picture in the background, a hollow white circle with a ‘wheel’ animation. In addition, we have a circle with the photo of the flower placed on top of the flower picture in the background.

Step 3: Apply ‘Grow/ Shrink’ animation

Click on the circle with the flower image. Apply the entrance effect 'Appear', and let the start be ‘After Previous’. Click on the flower image once again and add the ‘Grow/Shrink’ animation to make it grow to 150%. Set the speed to 'fast'. The animation should start 'After Previous’.

Now you can play the animation. Here is the sequence of what will happen:

First, the hollow white circle appears with wheel animation to mark the area being zoomed in
The picture of the flower ‘appears’ and ‘grows’ to 150%
This creates the zoom effect in PowerPoint you saw at the start of this tutorial.

Isn’t the effect interesting? By learning the base technique, you can customize it to suit your needs.

If you have an issue with the quality of photos when using the 'grow' animation, you can find a solution in this tutorial.

Variations of the Zoom Effect in PowerPoint

It takes a lot of time and effort to create professional quality custom animated slides for your business slides. Most business presenters don’t have the time to create such high-quality slides for themselves. This is the reason we came up with a collection of 750+ Advanced Animated Templates for PowerPoint.

Here is a variation of the picture animation from the pack…